Hope and Legacy
by Aloice
Summary: Or: how to make and unmake a God, over the course of 1000 years. Character study of Hope Estheim after XIII. Title's from Yuzuru Hanyu's 2016-2017 free skate program. (If you haven't watched that performance at Worlds, you should.) Spoilers galore; warnings for graphical depictions of violence, terminal illness etc.
1. Palumpolum

**A/N:** Quotes are by Frank Warren and Margaret Atwood. Also being cross-posted on AO3.

* * *

 ** _It's the children the world almost breaks who grow up to save it._**

* * *

The transport airship makes an uncharacteristic noise as it lands, blasting dust and monster-bits into his jacket and hair. He's stiff yet inconspicuous in faded battle-worn clothes, standing next to a row of yet-snoring soldiers with loaded guns and sweat-streaked uniforms.

 _(It's just starting to dawn on him that he doesn't stand out from a line of professional killers.)_

"Hope, we've been here five days. It's time to return home."

The voice is grave yet familiar.

Hope Estheim tilts his head, says nothing. His seafoam green eyes are dry and alert, surveying. A steady pulse throbs nervously under the yellow knot on his wrist, unused to the flawless unmarked skin above. There's an emptiness on his tongue that he can't put words to.

"You're not a l'Cie anymore, Hope," the father insists, reaching for his son and pulling him close upon encountering no resistance. The sun has risen just enough to throw the reflection from the crystal pillar into the young boy's eyes; said boy grimaces, then wonders wistfully at the structure, at the young women – friends, companions, _partners_ – trapped eternally in their dreams. "Nothing will happen to you. I won't _let_ anything happen to you."

Palumpolum burns. On his favorite childhood street, he has been hunted by a mob armed with vacuum cleaners and lamp posts, former teachers and neighbors screaming for l'Cie blood with shaking hands and twisted faces. His residence is in ruins, windows shattered, furniture torn through by bullet holes and family pictures scattered all over the floor. The words that tumble out of his mouth are surprisingly soft. "It's not me I'm worried about, Dad."

A chuckle reverberates through Bartholomew's frame. Both of them die a little inside at the utter wrongness of it. "Well, it should be."

He presses his head against his father's chest ( _is this for him or his father, he doesn't know, and a part of him knows it doesn't matter_ ) and smiles, glancing at the scene around him with an urgent fondness. He won't lose everyone, he hopes – Snow and Serah would doubtlessly welcome him if he ever wants to visit, and Dajh seems to have genuinely entertained the idea of a big brother. _I'll come back_ , he shouts silently in the general direction of the pillar, _I'll come back for you. I'll come back with a drill or an ice-melter or some kind of new verdict from the gods and I'll free you. It'll happen before I grow another inch. One of you will have to buy me my first razor. I'll always –_

"Come. We'll have to squeeze in at the back. We're not designated transport, here. It's this or another airship like this in another thirteen days."

Bartholomew is out before they completely lose sight of the soldiers' camp, and he presses his face to the airship window, not quite ready just yet to say goodbye; it's impossible to tell human shapes in the crystal even this high and up close, and he wonders why the gods had decided to take Light of all people. _Perhaps they had asked. Perhaps they had to pick someone besides Vanille and Fang and Light had volunteered, put herself forward. What had she said, even at Palumpolum? Oh, yes –_

 _Start running. I'll keep 'em busy. You survive._

He laughs mirthlessly into the window as the airship gradually pulls away from the pillar.

 _If only the gods and the Fal'Cie are ever that benevolent. There's no way that Light would ever voluntarily give up the chance to be with Serah again._

"I'll come back for you," a repeat, but now with a steely edge heated by tears turned into steam, "Count on it."

* * *

The first morning he wakes up on his own bed in Palumpolum, he wonders if everything has just been one terrible bad dream. The city, contrary to his expectations of death threats and hellfire, is actually quite the ghost town; many purged families have not yet returned ( _he shudders to think of those who cannot_ ) and others have fled and not come back. He's wandered once from his house to the food distribution center without running into anyone, although he has a lingering suspicion that there had been eyes watching him from within the shadows, too afraid to approach or speak out.

( _We did nearly bring down the entire planet_ , he thinks humorlessly to himself. I _could have brought down the entire planet_.)

The ground beneath him feels like it's rattling even when it's solid. He walks on his friends' lives and dreams.

"Were you the l'Cie child?" The red-haired woman at the center finally asks after a week, averting his gaze as she dumps bag after bag of nuts and grain on the table. The city is running low on filtered water. They are alone save for two guards standing right behind her. He has not bothered to camouflage himself – he deserves any wrath from the townspeople, he's decided, especially since he's grown too wary to be caught off guard by one seeking to kill him.

It's nearly impossible to appear sincere when he's tense and ready to bolt. Good habits from the times on Pulse. "I'm sorry."

She stares at the table for a long while before making the sign against evil. "Do some good once you grow up, won't you?"

* * *

The toxic air in the ruins of his house still hasn't completely dissipated and it'll be another ten years before anyone will come to fix it, so he takes to reading outside, slinging Fal'Cie water purification and energy grid maintenance over his shoulders and stuffing an improved model of his boomerang into his pants. His father tells him anxiously to stay within Felix Heights, warns him against vengeful townspeople and the possibility of getting stomped to death by a still-loose adamantortoise. He nods and doesn't listen. He needs to see the extent of the city's – of Cocoon's – destruction.

It occurs to him on that fateful slide in Rivera Towers that he can now throw the words he had used on Snow right back at himself, and he laughs before nearly breaking into tears, marveling at how much of a hypocrite he has been.

 _(How can you even apologize to an entire city, left alone an entire world?)_

"Onii-san?"

He freezes.

"Onii-san, can you help me with these bags? They're too heavy for me."

He follows the voice and sees a little girl, perhaps nine or ten, trying to haul up two large bags of food up an incline slope. She's pale and wide-eyed and frightened, but she relaxes when he approaches and smiles innocently when he takes both of the bags. Her laughter as he awkwardly tries to balance the weight is music to his ears.

"You look silly, onii-san!"

His smile back at her is just a little forced. _Please don't tell me that she's lost her parents, too. Although if she's getting this much food and out here alone, there's probably still hope somewhere_. "If you don't… mind me asking, is someone sick or injured at home?"

Her face falls. She turns away, fiddling with her fingers. "My mom. She's broken her legs and they don't have the things they need to make a cast, so she's staying at home. She tells me not to come out and get the food, but she's got to eat, and –"

"Show me where you live. I might be able to do something." His fingertips are itching with phantom-power, urges to cast cura and bravery and haste, but he's lost his connection to the Fal'Cie and all that remains to him are images of bandages and concrete, a vague idea of human anatomy and an even vaguer idea of human sympathies. He wonders if the mother would throw him out of the house as soon as she sees him, catastrophe incarnate in a body just as young and fragile as her daughter's, and knows that even if she does, he'll still have to try.

 _And if I figure this out in a reasonable frame of mind, perhaps I can convince someone to make a good amount of them to supply to the whole city. Survivors shouldn't die because of human negligence. We are better than that. We will have to be._

* * *

He turns sixteen on a full moon and his father brings home more books, volumes on the Farseers and their Paddraean Archaeopolis. It's been more than a year since the fall of Cocoon and the world's still a shambles, with luxuries like birthday cakes only available to the most corrupt former members of the Sanctum. He knows he no longer cares about cakes. It's the absence of everyone he's wanted to invite here that stings.

( _It's been months since he's last seen Dajh's little dance and Serah berating her students, and he's not sure he can go on for that much longer without hearing Snow's idiotic brand of optimism in person, not when he's been having nightmares of Titan and Orphan and_ there are things that you just can't tell your father.)

"Serah and Sazh both sent me apologies," his father notes, almost as if he's read his son's mind. Hope barely turns his scowl into a frown, suddenly remembering – and becoming upset by – the memory of him swearing that he'll free the girls in the pillar before he's grown another inch. "I hope these books will suffice as gifts, however. It has not been easy to acquire them."

"The black market, huh?" he jokes, flipping through the pages with much wonder. There's something about the serene azurite-haired seeress that makes him uneasy. "Thank you, Dad," he says more seriously, understanding now how providing for him has become (or has it always been?) Bartholomew's way to show affection. "It means a lot to me."

Bartholomew smiles wanly at him before reaching up to cup his cheek. "As it means a lot to me that you're still here with me."

"I'll be here as long as you are here, Dad."

"You don't have to be." His father settles into a chair with a sigh, but the glint in his grey eyes is more than frank and genuine. "If you miss your friends down on the surface –"

"I'll be here as long as you want me to be."

Bartholomew stops, stares. Hope feels some heat rise to his cheeks. The clock behind them ticks away, newly fixed. Nora gazes at them patiently through her picture frame next to the empty dishes.

"Hope," his father says, gentle and yearning and with just that trace of hopelessness that makes for a sudden sourness in his nose, "Hope, come sit with me."

He gets up, obeys. No more words are said. They are both so awkward with them. But he makes sure to sit where the dwindling street lights would shine through the yet-unfixed shattered windows to light up his moonglow hair, Nora's hair, and he feels Bartholomew hesitantly reach for it, trying to treasure what yet remains.

 _I am the proof that she existed_ , he recalls whispering once, cleaning out the family photo albums and having just a little bit of trouble to let the memories go, but Bartholomew had only smiled, faintly shaking his head:

 _You are the proof that you have fought and loved._

* * *

The Central Arcade had been designed to be warm and fluid, easy-going and fragrant, rounded curves of mosaic and earthy tiles painting a hymn of harmony and home; now it lies in ruins, scorched earth and tangled steel and screens that occasionally flicker into life only to broadcast distorted images of monochrome static, and it has been all but abandoned by the city even during its vigorous efforts at reconstruction. It's usually here that Hope finds himself ambushed, laughed at or threatened with anything from humiliation to murder, and after more than a year of endless apologies, too-wide smiles and quickened steps, he's grown just a little tired of it all.

The boys fall upon him like a pack of wolves with their fists and knives and he finds that button on his storage pack, opening his arms calmly as if to embrace the onslaught. The oldest of those boys are too close when the first shockwave hits: they're thrown back across the square nearly fifty feet through the air as if they have hit the recoil point of a trampoline, and then there are screams as the younger boys jolt in attempts to create distance, staring back at the silver-haired young man with pure terror as if he's just grown three heads.

( _He's reminded of the Pulse machine on the Vile Peaks, the ease with which it broke through entire phalanxes and tossed entire rows of soldiers around as if they were toy bricks, and he's almost a little afraid of himself_.)

"Magic!" The boys hiss, scrambling as he advances on them, arms still spread wide with nothing in his hands. "Accursed l'Cie!"

"That was not magic," he says coolly, looking down upon them with only the faintest hint of disdain ( _he will not let himself become that kind of person, he knows only too well where it could lead, he would die before he ever attempts to play God or Fal'Cie_ ). "It's only a man-made shield mechanism, and you should use it, too. This is simple to construct and use, and you are not going to stand a chance against a real monster with that kind of knife."

He distributes extra copies of his inventions to the boys and good-naturedly explains how it all works, and by the end of the week they've all become his most ardent fans.

* * *

A turn of keys in the door. His father's voice, somehow more somber than it ever has been. He blinks.

"A decision has been made, Hope."

Hope looks up warily from the bowl of noodles he is making. In the background, the broadcast is still ongoing. Yaag Rosch has been reading emotionlessly about Bodhum for what feels like an hour and he feels like he's about to throw up. "I see certain things have been… revealed."

"That is one way to describe it." His father is shrugging out of his formal clothes, an emotionless contemplative look on his lined face. "How do you feel, Hope?"

"Me? I don't know. I don't really feel like anything has changed." He's starting to get a little worried. "Is everything okay, Dad?"

"Do you remember Rygdea? I have accepted a position in his provisional government."

" _Dad_ –"

"But we can talk about that later. I want to talk about something else first." Bartholomew suddenly beams, _truly_ beams, and Hope winces at his enthusiasm. "We are establishing an institution called the Academy."

"Let me also say something first? Please do take care of yourself. I'd hate to see anything happen to you."

* * *

After his first day at the Academy, he retraces the path from the dock to the tunnels and finally the Nutriculture Complex.

He has put on a hoodie before leaving; it's ironic, he thinks, how he didn't care for camouflage while he was hated, but now that everyone in town is queueing up to apologize to him and praise him for his deeds, he wants nothing but to run away. The path has miraculously survived all the previous year's bombing and carnage despite the continued decay in the unused pipes and infrastructure, and as he hops and jumps through memory lane, the boomerang in his hands seems to gain weight and drag.

 _I'm older_ , he grasps, crouching down to enter the tunnels, _taller, and lonelier_. The Academy uniform he's wearing is a size too big for him – he's not supposed to join it so early, he's had to show off more than he was comfortable with – yet in it he still looks grim and mature, almost like an adult. _Soon I'll be the same age as Vanille. And then I'll catch up with Light. How many years would it take before we'll get the breakthrough we need?_

Lightning's memories haunt him on this path, her shouted commands and promises to keep him safe. Here she has called off Operation Nora but just fell short on confiscating his knife. Here she has looked lost, confessing to have lost everything herself, then promised him that she'll still help him find the hope he was named for.

The Nutriculture Complex is empty; Carbuncle has departed, he's seen the Fal'Cie himself in Eden during the siege, and the food production center is on the other side of the city now, just over the hill. He will no longer be troubled by flanitor sirens here, just as he can no longer hold the hands of those he has lost; without divine or friendly human guidance, he must persist – alone.

 _We understand more than we know._

He paints the scene, the floating rotating platforms, the energy supply lines, and the pool of culturing media underneath it all. There will be labels; calculations, new points of analysis. He can already see particular tricks the Fal'Cie must have employed with humidity maintenance and waste disposal. He searches his mind now for another particular memory, that of Carbuncle's fluttering butterfly wings, its calculated and precise revolutions.

(If a Fal'Cie can bear all those years of solitary confinement just for a prayer to be reunited with its Maker, he can wade through this ocean of the unknown to create a better world for his friends.)

 _It's not a matter of can or can't. Some things you just do._

A final memory, one that makes him smile:

( _We can make it. Get to the station, and board the train for Eden._

 _You think it's still running?_

 _Well, if it isn't, we'll make it run_.)


	2. Yaschas Massif

**_A/N:_** Quote is by Joseph Brodsky. The Bartholomew angst just came to me as I read a very touching German father-son story (in its Chinese translated form, no less...)

I don't know if the next chapter will be Academia (Hope-centric) or Augusta Tower (a lot of Alyssa). I think I'll probably figure it out as I go. All my thanks to the Theory of Everything soundtrack and Homestuck/Clark Powell + Toby Fox's "Overture (Canon Edit)" for great music while writing. Oh, and my own Jayce angst from, like, two years ago? Always nice to realize you've written crumbling scientists before. (Probably because you were also one at the time.)

* * *

 ** _If there is any substitute for love, it is memory._**

* * *

A part of him has always known that Lightning's knife would come back to haunt him.

Snow settles, as inelegantly as always, into his father's couch ( _he could have sworn that had been a new year's gift from Rygdea, why can't Snow just go sit somewhere else, anywhere else_ ), and tells the story of Light's possible survival. Snow has a tendency to believe the most outlandish and tragic of Serah's claims. Snow has a (probably unfortunate) tendency of being right. "It took all this time for Serah to tell me everything. I fully believe that she's telling the truth."

Hope considers it and holds the smile, the brightness he presents to a friend he has sorely missed ( _and not seen at all, damn it, Snow_ ) since that fateful day on Gran Pulse. A dormant wistfulness in his chest is slowly brewing into something resembling a deep regret sprinkled with hope. The Lightning he knew could give _anything_ a run for their money.

(He cheerfully sits on the implication that says by that logic, she should have returned by now.)

The shock and grief on losing Lightning had felt wrong, unnatural; even his father had noted that he hadn't been as upset as expected, and he had walked away from the scene with but a hint of forlornness, having to convince himself to turn over the knife. _It still had her warmth on it_ , he reflects now, hiding his turmoil with sips and sips of coffee. _The nervous edge on the blade had been the same as when I last held it in Palumpolum. It had felt threatened._

(But where, if anywhere, can she be?)

Snow shifts his weight, embarrassed at Hope's claim that he hasn't changed a wee bit. "Can you help keep an eye on Serah for me? It might be a while before I'd be able to bring sis home because I don't have any leads, but –"

 _Take me with you_. "I… will try my best. I haven't been to New Bodhum yet, you know."

"You'll love it."

"I don't doubt. I'll look into the Academy files while you're gone. Keep you updated if anything relevant comes up." _There's still so much that I need to know. You can't just throw your fists at a time-eating and memory-rewriting black hole and expect it to work._ He's not Snow, almost divinely gifted with the ability to blindly trust in himself and make it work, and if he's being honest with himself, he's apprehensive about reuniting with Light again, too, for it's been _years_ and he hasn't exactly been looking for her and _oh god what would she even say to me, we were supposed to be partners_. He'll have to produce something miraculous to make up for it. Something only he can do.

Perhaps helping the reconstruction effort at New Bodhum and Cocoon would be a good start.

* * *

What had been lingering paranoia about Snow's safety turns into a full-blown panic attack when he hears that Serah has also disappeared.

"Okay, so," he rasps a few hours later, sitting in the café in New Bodhum with Lebreau and Yuj and having trouble believing just how _okay_ they are with all of this, "You were attacked by these monsters, and then this guy – this _Noel_ – just fell out of the sky and convinced Serah to go time-traveling with him to save Lightning?"

"More or less, yeah," Lebreau nods, stirring her drink sagely. Hope can't help but bury his face in his hands as Serah's cat climbs onto his shoulders, meowing softly.

"That's not – you're supposed to _report_ these things and get them looked at by professionals before you just go through them! What if they end up 500 years in the future? Do they even know where they're going?"

"You mean, you wanted to look at them?" Someone is being just a _little_ bit too perceptive.

 _Maybe_. "Well, can I maybe take a look at them now?" he asks sullenly, scratching the cat on its chin. It meows again approvingly before settling down on his lap. He's going to have to apologize for all this rude behavior later. For now, he's just all kinds of mad about missing the one way ticket to Lightning and also somehow losing _another_ friend to Bhunivelze only knows what.

( _He's not going to even think about why Light had asked for the sister she'd gone to hell and back to save as opposed to someone who'd willingly lay down his life for her_.)

* * *

It's a whole week before he packs again for Palumpolum. Serah's students have been inconsolable, and to placate them he has had to tell each a l'Cie hero story (" _Tell us about the Grand Prix again! And Fang's dragon! And Ochu_!") and promise a tour of the new Academy headquarters ("next next Sunday, call me and I'll get uncle Sazh to come pick you up"). Although he's never been to Serah and Snow's house or met the rest of NORA after that day on the Hanging Edge, he has somehow been immediately accepted as a member of the Villiers-Farron extended family, even though no one seems to quite know what his place is supposed to be (if he's actually some kind of younger brother, is he an adopted Farron, or an adopted Villiers?)

"Are you going to look for Lightning, too?" Lebreau asks, handing him a copy of the NORA special recipe upon his request. The NORA members have been absolutely stuffing him with gifts; he suspects it may have something to do with their guilt over his mother. "I suppose you can't just leave – you've got your father to look after."

"Right," he replies, finishing the math exercises he's been composing for the kids and rolling up the piece of paper. _Not to mention the time gates don't so much as glow in my presence._ "And there are the paradoxes, too – what if they just start popping up everywhere? I need to report back to the Academy, let them know what's happening. All the work we've done won't mean a single thing if a swarm of monsters can just erase them in a matter of days."

Gadot grunts in the background. "You really trust the Academy, huh? I guess your old man is one of its founders, so we can trust what it does."

"Oh, yeah." He flashes his brilliant adult smile and passes the exercises to Yuj. "Make sure they do at least one exercise a day. And if the Academy ever does anything suspicious, you can count on me to fix it. That's how I can help."

( _He's not bitter about the totally enigmatic and elusive qualities of the time gates. Not at all_.)

* * *

"Hope, my dear friend and team leader," a young man at the Academy moans, protruding spiky black hair and blue eyes into his field of vision, "you should get dinner with us sometime."

He blinks and drops his pen considerately. He had turned to work on the Kujata replacement project and the Gran Pulse manual irrigation projects after the time gates had ( _again_ ) given him nothing but confusion and grief, and it appears that he has once again (ironically) forgotten the time. "Give me five. How are you all doing?"

"I think the trainees at the back have requested another derivation. When you go back to class – well, we just all start wandering like mindless sheep. We can't wait for you to graduate and start working full time. Haven't you basically already done everything you need to do?"

The other man's woeful eyes are making Hope grin. "I'm not doing this to torture you, I swear. I just… need one final section for my, uh, thesis on the time gates."

"Oh yeah, director-elect Hope Estheim's Honors Plus dissertation on time and space, and how we're all doomed and at the mercy of Almighty Bhunivelze." The man pretends that he's about to burst into tears. "What shall we do when he single-handedly saves the world?"

"Okay, okay, now you're just making fun of me. I have no special ambitions or aspirations for high office, and I've always needed and appreciated everyone's support and love. Come on. Let's meet the team." He concludes his report with a flourish, rises – and follows the researcher through the corridors past the wall of inspirational paste-its, titled (in elegant wine-colored script) _WHY ARE YOU WORKING FOR THE ACADEMY_. Noting Hope's _okay-but-seriously-why_ face at the wall, the coworker playfully pushes him forward towards it. "Say, Hope, you are the most dedicated researcher Cocoon's ever seen. Your old man stays here 15 hours a day and you seem to stick around for even longer. Do you just love ancient ruins and turbojets that much?"

"Unfortunately," he nods agreeably, punching the Fibonacci sequence into the security door, "I know one of the pilots who fly the commuter route, and he has always been a terrible influence."

* * *

When he had approached Sazh about Snow and Serah's disappearances, the much older man had snorted and patted his shoulders sympathetically. "Those two just do whatever they want," Sazh had sighed, watching Dajh play with the chocobo chick with all the fondness in the world. "You know this."

Hope had felt almost glad, then, that Sazh had not been there to witness all _his_ antics in the Vile Peaks and Palumpolum. _He's classified me with the sensible ones_. The words he was just about to let slip were very much only on the pretense side of sensible. "You'll stay here, right, Sazh? There's no way that you'll ever leave Dajh to do anything."

"Of course." Sazh had ruffled his hair and it had been awkward because unlike Dajh, Hope didn't actually possess an afro. "I trust the Farron sisters and their new… friend to know what they're doing, even if Snow doesn't." A chuckle. "And someone's got to keep an eye on you."

"Hey, I'm not a child anymore!"

"You're all kids to me. Every single last one of you."

(Hope Estheim had let out a cry when he heard three months later that the beloved Sazh Katzroy [and his child, Mr. Katzroy would never let go of his child] had vanished as well.)

* * *

He doesn't remember when he had _really_ picked up the coffee habit, but he _does_ eventually notice how he's memorized the location of every miniature crack on the wall of his Academy cubicle. _There is no real pattern, geometric or otherwise,_ he had written in a notebook, perplexed, until it hits him how ridiculous he is being and he's forced to shuffle to the bathroom ( _is this the true walk of shame_ ) to wash his face.

The bathroom ( _the entire floor, probably_ ) is empty. He turns on the faucet and takes a long, good look at himself in the mirror. Here's the one that time and destiny has forgotten. Safe. Lost. Tucked away in a little pocket of make-believe, surrounded by gears and human sweat. He wonders if Light and the Oerba girls would even still be friends with him now, the white-clad sky blue-tied young man who breathes paraffin oil and naps in a storage room full of hand drawn blueprints and ferroelectric films. Blasting apart hoplites and flans with firaga and thundaga feels like a distant memory from a whole other world.

Missing them, missing _her_ : one solitary soul paper-folding all his love and hopes around a time when he had been likewise touched by fate and truth-defying magic. True, they had fallen and fallen hard, but even her callouses had been so soft.

 _(Are you hurting where you are now, alone but never one to give up, breaking into new callouses and vigor with that same heart I've grown to worship?)_

* * *

He graduates at the top of his class for the second year in a row, although there was widespread confusion on how to address his "class" since he's so often skipped ahead and left all his peers in the dust. What rumors had once existed about him utilizing his father's connections for his own ends have all but vanished. He holds nearly two dozen patents and have led a similar number of investigative teams, and as he balances the graduation cap on his own head, he sees something resembling reverence from even his own father's eyes.

 _There's wind chill_ , something in his mind registers, as he hears his own name being called. A thousand heads turn towards him. He smiles comfortably. _Of the unnatural kind. There's probably a paradox around the city somewhere. After this ceremony, he'll need to retrieve his assortment of clocks, his boomerang and the team on the sixth floor._

The man on the stage clears his throat. "The rising star and hope of the Academy, Doctor Hope Estheim. Let us congratulate him on his achievements, for they are impressive and numerous, and hear what he has to say about our institution."

He steps up to the stage, shakes hands with his father and Rygdea as well as another six or seven people he vaguely knows, gives a small presentation on one of his thirteen latest projects. Thundering applause. He catches syllables of whispers from the honor row, words like "director" and "no election" and "support." He pretends not to hear them.

"I'd like to thank everyone that has helped me through these hard and turbulent years… the Academy founders and trustees, my mentors, coworkers and friends here at the Academy, my family." An agonizing pause. His father nods in his general direction – he knew Bartholomew would have preferred _family_ to _father_. A thousand snaps from the cameras. "My heart also goes out to Lightning Farron, Oerba Dia Vanille and Oerba Yun Fang."

"We live in an unprecedented age. We had been manipulated and lied to, rounded up and nearly driven to extinction, yet we have persevered and flourished. We have believed in ourselves and with our own strength created new, wondrous cities of refuge and promise. If we look forward – examine everything with open, accepting eyes, think, and act – nothing will be beyond us. We may make mistakes, but unlike the Fal'Cie, we can rise from our own ashes and hold each other's hands. So let us dream, and let us believe. We will not have any regrets."

(The same speech he had given to his friends after defeating Cid Raines on the Fifth Ark ends up being broadcasted all over Cocoon and the new cities of Gran Pulse, and he doesn't quite know whether to laugh or to cry.)

* * *

The day he encounters Alyssa Zaidelle's report on the Bresha Ruins is the beginning of the end.

He had all but given up on his honors thesis – there have been no more credible sightings of time travelers, it's likely that Snow, Serah and Noel had gone into the past, perhaps he's already living in an alternate timeline, Etro forbid – when the word "rose" inevitably again catches his attention and he pulls a new report out of the pile, peeking (not without a slight degree of shame about his irrational fascination) at the name and contents. A.Z., a trainee, 5 AF. The author appears to be female, of the same age as him, and a mathematician. He frowns, pours himself another cup of coffee, and starts reading.

(He eventually finds himself having to resist flooding her mailbox with questions like a 14-year-old boy falling in love for the first time.)

* * *

A knock on the door. He almost jumps. It must be Alyssa. Adrenaline and nostalgia fill his veins, a longing that utterly strips him of his smile-mask and leaves him breathless. Somewhere his friends are alive and she's seen them and the path to the future is lighting up like a highway to paradise, and he only needs to speak to her, connect himself back online –

A creak. She has let herself inside. He doesn't know what expression he's wearing when she sees him, but he knows hers, and it only sends an all-too-familiar shiver down his spine.

Purged eyes.

"Director Estheim. I must apologize for my entry – I realized that you were already inside, and didn't want to take up too much of your precious time. All I wanted to say is – it'd be an honor to work by your side."

He stares at her, lips moving for a clever and polite dismissal, until he hears himself say _okay_.

* * *

10 AF is the milestone that he has been dreading forever.

"Happy twenty-fourth, Hope," his father beams, positively glowing as Hope decorates the dinner table with his own homecooked dishes. As Bartholomew had continued to age, Hope had picked up the chores around the house, attending to them with the same kind of diligence as he did to his work. They still live in the same house; there are too many memories neither of them are willing to let go of, and Hope has grown to enjoy napping incognito on the commute train.

"Mhm. Careful with these. I only learned that other one last week."

"My son the master chef. Your mother would be so proud, so shocked, but so proud."

"It's just scientist food. I'm glad you don't have high standards. Lebreau still chews me out whenever I try to make the NORA special." Ignoring his father's not-so-subtle dig on his spoiled child self ( _he's been so much more vocal about Nora and the past recently, it's hard to tell if it's because their relationship has gotten better or if his wits and conscience have started to wander since his retirement_ ), Hope turns towards the mountain pile of gifts right inside his door (and presumably outside of it, too), and can't help but scowl. "Now _that_ …"

"Is perfectly called for, Hope!" His father interrupts, grinning like a child. "Did you know, I got stopped by two young ladies the other day, approaching _me_ for _your_ signature –"

"By Etro, what did you tell them –"

"Oh, I know you're taken alright," Bartholomew responds thoughtfully, biting into a piece of chashu, "but I'm a good father, so I'm going to help you keep your secret."

He nearly chokes on his drink. "Wait, Dad, I'm _not_ dating Alyssa –"

"I know you're not interested in Alyssa. I'm talking about Lightning Farron."

He actually chokes on his drink.

"It's been ten years, Hope. I wasn't there with you and Nora when it all happened – the gods cursed me for that – but I've been here after, and I'm your father." Beneath the slightly haphazard mix of white and brown hair, Bartholomew's eyes are too tender for comfort. "I also know how it feels to not get over someone for a whole decade."

"It's not like that, Dad," he responds sullenly, placing his glass back onto the table. "What you and Mom had was real. She'd always loved you, and she loved you, loved _us_ , until the very end. All I have is a one-sided crush, okay? Light will never want me. I don't even know where she is, if she's still alive. My memories tell me that she's under us, frozen in the pillar. I'll get over it."

"But who would you love, if you're going to give her up?" Bartholomew inquires, draining his wine glass. "You value the heroic, the persistent, the caring and the passionately if not obstinately single-minded – someone not unlike yourself, if I can say as much. And look at yourself. You are the Director of the Academy, the most brilliant and productive mind in the world – who would even still be able to understand and stand next to you?"

He squeezes his eyes shut and tries his hardest to not sound exasperated. A part of him already knows the answer to the question he's about to ask. "Dad – if you know everything already, why are we still having this conversation?"

"I heard about the Oracle Drive in Yaschas Massif." His father reaches across the table, caresses his son's slightly shaking hand. "Listen to me on just one thing, Hope – don't let the people you love go. Stay by them. Protect them. Hold onto them as tightly as you can. You've already lost your mother due to no fault of your own – I don't want you to repeat my mistake, too."

* * *

Yaschas Massif will be his first solo mission after Bartholomew's retirement. While it's true that the old man never directly supervised his research anyway, always citing potential conflicts of interest, he can't help but shiver from a profound loneliness in his bones as he calls Alyssa to arrange for their transport. _Lightning is in that Oracle Drive_ , he tells himself sternly, instructing Alyssa to file an application for two teams and paramilitary support. _If the investigation goes well, you won't be lonely for long._

He gets far more than what he has bargained for. Serah and Noel descends from the time gate with tales of a version of himself from a different timeline and a wealth of new knowledge on time travel. The Lightning in the Oracle Drive fights in the unseen realm with all the power and drive that he remembers, holy light in her eyes and angelic feathers trailing her armor, and he can't help but gasp as he realizes that she's holding far more than just the weight of Cocoon on her shoulders.

By the research platform he spies Noel lingering, gazing at both the Oracle Drive and the vision it carries with an unreadable expression. He can guess half of the time traveler's mind: the oracle drive is the remnant of the love he has lost, and the vision a harbinger for the shattered pieces of his future.

 _It doesn't have to be this way_ , Serah cries out, and in one moment the threads of past and future weave together, show him the way: the poles of two opposing worlds, undying divinity and flawed humanity. Alone in Valhalla, Lightning will slash a path forward with faith and pure strength of will. Leading generations of humanity on Gran Pulse and Cocoon, he will forge a road from the crack she leaves behind, fortify man's souls and hopes into an indestructible castle.

 _Perhaps I have a role to play after all. As all my friends draw forth the strings of fate between times and worlds, I must put my foot down and grow roots. There's a battle here that will be fought for all the upcoming centuries. Since I won't have all the time in the world like Light, I'll have to send my heart and mind into overdrive._

"Do you understand what you've promised them, Director?" Alyssa prods the day after their return to Palumpolum, wary-faced under her cheery armor. "You've basically promised to become more than Ragnarok."

"It's not as beyond me as you'd think," he murmurs, and leaves it at that.

 _(He's not going to allow future mothers and sons to fall to their deaths from a shattered paradise.)_

* * *

He had set himself up only to watch it all crash and fall.

Bartholomew turns towards him on what he knows would soon be his father's death bed, a wane smile on an emaciated face.

"You can't save me, Hope, and that's okay. The sooner you accept it, the sooner it'll be easier for both of us."

He turns to depart, nearly slamming the door shut before, resigned and unwilling to give in, leaves it ajar. "I refuse."

* * *

Bartholomew's not terribly old, but he's no longer young, either. In his mid-sixties, he has gone down with terminal metastatic cancer. The tumor had grown steadily, tucked away in an inconspicuous spot in his body, and both father and son had blamed fatigue and weakness over the years on the nature of Academy work, oblivious to the far more horrendous reality.

 _I never notice anything_ , Hope thinks sardonically to himself, pulling up another X-ray of his father's metastases and reading the measurements on the bottom right of the chart. _Or when I do, it's always already too late, and I'm left with nothing but… rage._

But it's not over yet. He won't let it be over like this. What's the point of research and knowledge if he can't use any of it to save the people he loves? Worse yet, a tendril of fear curling in his gut that he refuses to admit: _if I can't even save my father, how am I supposed to save the world?_

So: overnight reading. Overnight testing. He sets up a folder for his father's case, opens it as soon as 6pm hits and he's off his regular work shift, and does not close it again until 3am the following morning. He instructs Alyssa to leave him food outside his office as if he's a feral behemoth locked up in a cage in a zoo and he probably has started looking like one. A pager keeps him updated on his father's condition, blood gases and albumin and level of consciousness. He'll pick disease and death apart, one dying man at a time.

It's a few days before he sees a small note on top of Alyssa's dinner package. A message from his father: _You need to pick your battles, Hope. Remember Gran Pulse and Titan? Everything dies, eventually._

 _Not in Valhalla, apparently,_ he thinks bitterly, biting into a sandwich savagely as he evaluates the pharmacokinetic potential of a specific enzyme inhibitor. _Not that I know how to get there._

* * *

The first machines and drugs he creates work. The doctors extend Bartholomew's life by three months, then two months, then two weeks, until they ( _quietly and abashedly, knocking on the door of his office and whispering to him from behind his monitor screens_ ) declare his experiment over. He's no favored child of the god of death. Etro will take his father, regardless of what he might want to say about it.

He smiles brightly, thanks them, apologizes profusely for interfering with their already stress-laden work. That night, at 3am, he packs up the folder and saunters back home.

It's somewhere between the Rivera Towers and Felix Heights where he falls apart.

He watches the stars, the sharp edges of Fang and Vanille's crystal blossoms, the silence of the night, the quiet, frantic beats of his own heart under his chest. The grass is too coarse under his arms and neck, children of an infertile land of futility, evidence of his inescapable trap. The dawn bleeds Caius and Noel's dark violet and Lightning's rose pink, tales of hundreds of interwoven timelines that turn and breathe beyond his reach. Somewhere, Serah is fighting tooth and nail to save her sister. Noel pierces through life and death to seek a new human voice. Alone he remains the living grave of an abandoned time, the guardian of memories left behind, with the company of naught but an ever-building despair.

He turns the compiled booklet of Oracle Drive reports in his hands – recalls the utter lack of finds on this century, his lifetime, another battle he probably shouldn't pick to fight – and wishes there's a paradox somewhere, it has to be somewhere, the universe can't simply desire for everything Hope Estheim touches to disappear or die.

Another haunted soul picks up his shipwreck.

"Go talk to him, Director," she chastises, advancing towards him – he doesn't move to hide his pain, not anymore, not here – and her voice is surprisingly empathetic. "Some people know that they can't be saved, and the best thing you can do for them is just… acknowledge them and what they've done while they're still here."

He hasn't noticed that he's still not crying. He could have sworn he has been. "Tell him that I'm coming."

* * *

"Hope," floats his father's voice from the hospital bed, somehow still full of a laughter that fills life's empty and shattered bottles until they're full and brimming with joy, "stop sitting with your books and come sit with me."

He catches himself before the first tears fall. _I will be brave enough to say my first goodbye._ "I'll be here until the end."

* * *

In the last few days, Bartholomew tells him stories.

"Look at me! Look at all these self-indulgent toys my son's made for me. I am the happiest father on the planet." Bartholomew leans against Hope's metallic back support and regards an old photo album held by Hope's hanging object-holder, beaming, and the son sits down faithfully by the bed, waiting. A clock ticks behind them. They're counting down the seconds to midnight.

"What's the agenda for today?" The silver-haired young man asks, not without difficulty, not without swallowed tears. He's cradling one of his father's hands, careful not to touch the IV.

The smile slowly retreats from Bartholomew's eyes, but something more substantial gathers there instead. "Let's talk about us."

"There aren't any interesting stories about us."

"And that's where you are wrong. Listen." The grip from the dying man suddenly tightens. "Look at that moon. Thirteen years ago, to that same moon, I came back home, back to our house. The rooms and corridors were still suffused with you and your mother's presence. There were Nora's dishes in the fridge, your favorite documentaries under the TV – I sat, and I ate, and I watched, but I was alone. I waited. I pulled out all your notebooks from kindergarten to your last week of school, placed my wedding ring on top. I re-made all the promises I had ever broken and I hated myself."

"Dad, _no_."

"But you came back. You came back even though you didn't want to, even though there were PSICOM and Fal'Cie on your trail and a fate worse than death on your wrist, but you came back for me, and after Cocoon, too. I had imagined you dead, shot down or crushed under all the rubble, and after you left again, crystallized… I had gone down onto Gran Pulse to pick up my son's statue, not in my wildest dreams believing that I could hear him again. But there you were. And here you are. You gave me back a home I didn't deserve." The eyes of the founder of the Academy glinted under the faint silver light. "That, Hope, is an enormous thing."

"You are my _father_." His voice breaks, quivers. "I've always needed you and looked up to you. Sure, I was affected by the absence and the occasional harsh words… but your determination. Your faith. I wouldn't have gone into the Academy if not for you. There wouldn't _be_ an Academy without you."

"Did you know? I asked Rygdea to create the Academy for you." Bartholomew pauses, catches his breath; he stares, unable to look away. "Your eyes when I handed you that PSICOM casualty list. Your vitality when you slept, shifting back and forth in dreams I couldn't even begin to comprehend, but yet so stubborn and beautiful in your persistence and idealism against the tides of truth. Your imagination and capability to love… you deserve more, better." A few rapid, shallow coughs. "I saw you, that day, with the boys. I saw you throw them back, with that thing you'd been tinkering with in your room. My heart had risen to my throat – I wondered if the world had indeed taken too much from you, if it had broken you, if you had finally decided to just push back. I knew your friends had taught you better than that… but I also knew that they had all disappeared from your life, and I am not the best person to teach you how not to hate."

Memories flood back of the Central Arcade, the anger that had risen in his air-starved lungs, and the lost moments of pain. He lifts Bartholomew's withering hand up, touches his father's wedding ring with his own lips. A strangled question. "… Was I wrong?"

"No," the father responds softly. "I'd never been more proud in my life."

The tears come out in a rush. He sobs as he did that excruciating night in Vallis Media, releasing all the bottled-up hurt and fear in a heart forced to grow up way before its time, and then there are the words, the things he's promised he'd never say. "I'm scared, Dad." _Everyone's gone up and left and you are the last one._

Bartholomew pulls his hand back, slowly reaches up to stroke his son's head. "And admitting that is the first step to being human."

"I'll change history, bring both of you back." He pleads, desperate and anguished and just a child at the end of it all, and his father catches his tears with those weak palms, signs for a hug. The son clumsily climbs onto the bed with none of the grace of the world's beloved and they embrace, arms wrapped around each other, a strong young heart resonating against a fading elderly one as they drape each other with love.

It's the end of the road here, no doubt. But it will have to be a new beginning, too.

"Promise me, Hope," the father whispers, thin and weary but powered by a will of the world that they're both just starting to learn to confront, "Promise me that you will go on."

* * *

He scatters his father's ashes on a windy spring day, soaring into the sky in an Academy airship with Alyssa not ten feet away from him. The destinations are clear: the Hanging Edge, Palumpolum, and the wilds and new civilizations of Gran Pulse. _So I'll always be found_ , Bartholomew had said, smiling until the end. _Stay found, too, Hope, no matter where you are and what you will become._

"Alyssa?"

"Director?"

His pulse beats ceaselessly under the yellow knot. The time capsule calls. "It's time to go."


	3. Academia

**A/N**

Quote is by Robert Goolrick. If the final scene reminds you of something - I took a page out of Margaret Atwood's _Oryx and Crake_. Also a nod to the idea that Hope is always going to endure an assassination in 400 AF.

* * *

 _There is an ache in my heart for the imagined beauty of a life I haven't had, from which I had been locked out, and it never goes away._

* * *

They stand in single file on both sides of the corridor, impeccably dressed in their pastel colored uniforms with their heads bowed towards him, and he takes a deep breath, tasting but wistfulness and static in the air. He revels at how the Academy researchers almost resemble the silent stone pillars from the Paddrean archaeopolis: sunlight-kissed and ancient and solemn, witnesses of prophets too young for the future they have vowed to carry and see through. The departure ceremony showcases the sentinels' respect and promise. It has all the features of a funeral.

"Alyssa is waiting for you inside the containment room," one of many announces to him, and he wonders if this is the last time his heart will skip a beat like this, if he'll drown in a grave of his own design for centuries before they'll notice and deliver him like a stillborn. _You've spent months designing and testing the prototype and the real thing_ , rationality argues sternly within his skull, somehow taking on the visage of his grey-haired father, _don't lose faith in yourself now._

"The New Cocoon project…"

"All your files have been scanned and distributed," another assures him, voice sincere and earnest. "There will be new teams and continued research. Our next generation –"

"…Thank you." He doesn't really know what he's done to deserve their respect and love, but here, after the cancellation of the proto-Fal'Cie project and the departures of all his friends and family, the support and faith of his colleagues mean the world to him. _They'll look after me as I sleep. And their children. And their grandchildren._ A shiver runs down his spine as he tries to remember all their faces, even as he knows he will fail, and they will all be dead and dust the next time he encounters life and humanity. "I will do my best to honor this age. Honor what we all believe in and fight for." A pause. "Is there anything I should pass onto the Academy of 400 AF? Something we all think they should know?"

They look at each other before answering. The voice is clear and steady when it echoes. "Trust in Hope, and keep it alive." They're having too much fun with the pun. "Take care, Director."

There's nothing he can really say in response to that, so he slowly shakes hands with all of them – without his gloves, he wants to take the warmth with him into his endless night, to feel the truth in placing his life in the hands of every single last human – and walks into the light without looking back.

* * *

Alyssa's already lying within her capsule when he closes the door behind him, her lid pulled up so that only her blond head is visible; she turns towards him as he sighs and approaches his own pod, running his slightly feverish fingers over its sleek outer rim and refined circuitry. "Are you afraid, senpai?"

 _What if I won't understand the Thirteenth Ark at all? What if the Academy disintegrates in my absence? What if I'm dooming this timeline and everyone in it by attempting to travel in time without using a time gate?_ "Why are you doing this, Alyssa? You're popular, and everyone can see your talent as a mathematician. With me gone, you can easily become the next director of research, lead the Academy –"

The blue eyes that return his gaze are furtive but fiercely determined. He can't help but be reminded of another pair of purged eyes like these, hunted in the Vile Peaks, clinging to the one authority that seems to possess all the answers and the blessing of divinity. It's always unsettled him how _similar_ Alyssa is to him – is that why he's always instinctively pushed her away, even though he has always appreciated her intellect and companionship?

"Why? Because I want the world to remember me," her answer comes out in the same daredevil lighthearted tone that he's grown used to, but somehow the syllables are impossibly heavy, and he takes a whole minute to process them, chewing through the consequences of each word on his tongue. "I want _you_ to remember me."

"We could fail." His computational brain has already come up with more than a hundred paths to catastrophe in the past thirteen sleepless nights. These capsules could be their coffins; they are already the proof of their human hubris.

"Not with you," she insists, and he's suddenly almost touched to the point of tears – if still wary – of all her blind trust and faith. _She'll be the only person I still know. We'll be sharing this air – pristine or burning – for the next five hundred years._ "You _won't_. _They_ won't let you…"

(Why does she also sound like she wants to cry?)

"And _I_ won't, either."

* * *

In this floating cocoon of an artificial womb, he dreams of home and childhood.

Once upon a time they had had a garden in Palumpolum – just that little quarter-circle outside the residence, Nora buying all the pots and him doodling the layout on a crumpled piece of paper with rainbow markers and crayons – and the scene had been breathtaking in spring and autumn, all the daffodils and chrysanthemums filling the lonely dwelling with a glowing sweetness. They had filled the vases and jars within the rooms with those flowers, his protests growing weaker as Nora pressed her index to his forehead and whispered to him _they'll wither if you leave them alone, no beauty lasts forever_ – and he had held onto her like he'd held onto anything, wanting _her_ to last forever, this hope that the light in her heart wouldn't ever go out, that there'd always be a flower field to return to.

She falls through the damp loam into hard concrete and the entire abyss underneath. He stands on top of the world with a hundred mechanical arms but no way to reach.

And then his father – his father whom he once hated because the man would always place the greater good in front of himself and his child, run from conflicts that he had no chance to resolve. For those first few years after the fall of Cocoon Bartholomew would always insist on picking him up after Academy classes and sitting next to him on the commute; the young researcher's toolboxes for the laboratory sessions were always full regardless of how fast he was going through his parts, and he knew Bartholomew was proud of him, always been proud of him, _will_ be proud of him. _He'll be proud of me even if I disappear. He's proud of me even though he has disappeared._

And then Vanille and Fang; Vanille's smile that is all sunshine and love and a hope that doesn't die with home or civilization or several hundred years of sleep, and _he will be brave like her, he will have to be_ ; he can almost hear Fang's laughter in his ears now, the force against his body as she shoves him this way and that and tells him _this is nothing, try this other trial that I've cooked up just for you instead_. Snow carries his unconscious form up all the perilous ladders of suburban Palumpolum and Sazh trusts him as he trusts his baby chocobo, trusts him to babysit Dajh of all people; and then there are Serah and Noel, stitching up the furious bleeding of the world even as they recount all the terrible jokes they've made and heard – he loves and he's loved, he screams with his hands and heart open even as his loved ones fade through time and memory one by one, _he will find them, he will_ –

He drowns in his own longing before he realizes it happening, and in the suspension, he _sinks_ – to _where_ and _what_ he does not know, yet there's a touch of inevitability about how he's grown so heavy, so he allows destiny to take its course, just this once. He is a pebble dreaming to chart an indescribably dark and vast ocean; to explore is to be lost. He will risk being forgotten forever at the bottom of the chasm if it allows for the fantasy of a lighthouse somewhere down the line.

The falling is an endless cycle. He opens his eyes wide even as his body screams that he is dying. And suddenly – through all the grief and deep submerge and the currents of time – he hears _her_ , and the entire ocean parts to give them space.

* * *

It's not premeditated, this meeting; her snowlike feathers cascade down onto him, envelop him, capture his being and gently reminds him to breathe. As he finally comes to a stop, gasping unceremoniously, she reaches for him and folds him into an impossibly warm embrace. He's taller now, learned the ways of adult courtesy and dignity, become strong enough for others to lean on – yet here he has to resist the urge to simply fall apart on her shoulders, revert back to the lost child he once was in her presence. She's real and she's here and she's _sacred_. She's come to him for an important purpose. He steadies himself – slowly inhales her gift of the living sky – and strains to listen.

 _Keep going, Hope. You are on the right path._

She sees all of time, from Valhalla; the knowledge gives an edge to her features even as it softens it with the understanding of tragedies and love that can never be. Her statement settles a rock in his stomach and eases the tension in his joints but washes up a whole new wave of disappointment – _everything that has already happened is fixed and cannot be undone_. He meets the Mwynn-blue of her eyes with the seafoam of his own and is reminded of just how unfair and strange everything is, from her fight through all of time to the fact that he _knows_ he won't see her again until the end. _Until we both win. Until everything ends_. If he's been utterly alone with life and ignorance, she's been alone with death and truth. "Are _you_ all right, Light?"

He almost expects a chuckle or some other kind of dismissal – she's the strongest woman he's ever known, now also servant of the goddess and draped from head to toe in divine grace – but her features are stoic and nostalgic, and he feels something almost die inside of him, the reawakening of all his invisible wounds and bruises. If he has any pains that he never mentions to anyone, she can only be covered in them.

 _I must serve the goddess to repent for my sins. I will help you fix the timeline, and Serah will eventually come to me._

There are a lot of things that he could have said – that _you haven't sinned_ and _I'll be here for you too_ and _how did you just make that kind of decision about yourself, that's cursing yourself to a knight's purgatory for eternity, how many times have you fallen and broken your bones and chased until all you could hear was your heartbeat_ – but the utter empathy he feels for the young woman in front of him just overwhelms words and meaning, so he only pulls her close, wishing that this would mean something to her, a reminder for her that someone cares and that she's not and should never be alone. "…Everything will be fine, Light." _Take care of yourself. I don't want you to lose yourself to make up for something in the worlds beyond. Your love and humanity is the best thing that's ever happened to me._ "When you're done, come back to us safe and sound, okay?"

She doesn't promise; _can't_ promise. He promises for her. She melts from his world slowly and even though he's dreamed of it a thousand times, he doesn't try to chase after her and keep her there. It goes against all the yearning in his bones, but there's a _time_ and _place_ and _position to speak from_ and he knows how his role is to stay and devise. Her visit has been a privilege, her trust a mantra of truth; he will become creation if it would mean easing some of the weight on her shoulders.

(He gathers rose petals from the drowning waters of his soul and makes garlands to herald a new world's coming.)

* * *

The air is not the same when he becomes conscious of his own breathing again, on that first day in 400 AF.

A human voice greets him as he re-adjusts his eyes to focus; Lightning's (or were they Alyssa's) blue eyes are still vivid in his memory, and he recites Lightning's words quietly to himself, _right path_ and _fix the timeline_ and _Serah_. The interior of the time capsule has retained the same silver-and-blue sheen even as the atmosphere's become thinner and less suffused with crystal dust. _I was in Palumpolum_ , he remembers, swerving his head around in a kind of wild wonder, _but now –_

"Just a moment, Mr. Estheim," the female voice reassures soothingly. The gravity effects have mostly faded away; time is no longer stretched thin, and he feels like a sabotaged Purge train coming abruptly to a stop at the Hanging Edge. _I guess there's no more Light or Snow here to cushion my fall. I'll just have to hope the dizziness will go away._ "We are just running a few more tests to make sure that you are ready…"

Ready for what? Admiration? Ostracizing? He had known the moment Alyssa proposed the plan that he'd always be simultaneously always and never ready. "Just tell me," he asks, with a voice that's more lighthearted than the truth, "do you think I'd enjoy whatever I'm getting ready for?"

"We have good reason to believe that you will," the woman chuckles, and then the capsule opens – he glimpses a shade of dandelion yellow on a sleeve, a heart-shaped face framed by dark curly hair, and what seems to be a porcelain cup of coffee. "Try to drink this entire cup for me. We are holding a banquet in your honor later tonight. Records from 13 AF suggest this is your favorite coffee flavor."

He rises awkwardly – somehow his back has managed to wake up and not screech in pain – and takes the warm cup slightly numbly into his hands and is amazed that the aroma is the same. _I'm not a paradox_ , he repeats to himself, _just a disoriented non-morning person trying to enjoy a cup of coffee_. "This room and… building," he tries, "it has been moved and rebuilt, has it not?"

The smile on the woman's face grows just a shade softer as she passes you a new lab coat. "The Academy Headquarters was most recently expanded and renovated in 392 AF. Welcome to Academia, Mr. Estheim."

* * *

A lot of things have gone wrong during his slumber, but it seems like more things have gone right.

He stands on a pristine platform next to the Grand Avenue and surveys the city of Academia: Alyssa's been called to some kind of diversity conference, and he's strangely relieved that she's not leaning next to him or tugging on his sleeve. The city around him is grand and stately, rising from the rough reddish brown earth of Gran Pulse with floors upon floors of snowy concrete and marble. Expressways the color of the noon sky adorn the gaps between skyscrapers and serve as the city's lifelines, and there are young men and women laughing with each other as they dance across the streets, pointing to this sign or that. There are even some chocobos…

He'd be alright with just standing there and staring forever. There's a warm giddy pride in his chest that's filling him up from the inside even as it threatens to overflow and explode.

 _Do you see it, Rose? Your whole idea about the expressways serving as the arteries for a living city? Those are the Cocoon-style neon advertisement lights that Jeb's always missed, the aircars that were barely exploding prototypes in Gardenia's lab, and then there's the sheer scope of the city itself, I could swear that we once had an argument about the feasibility of a single human metropolis on Gran Pulse…_

His eyes fall on the gigantic shape hovering just behind the twin spires of Academy headquarters, and a soft gasp involuntarily escapes his lips. _And that's me._

The star, the God project, the plea that must save everything –

 _Bhunivelze_.

He turns, stares up at the Cocoon in the sky – and salutes all the scientists in the past who's kept him safe and brought him here. _And for you I'll send that planet into the sky._

* * *

During the first week, they give him several different tours of the city, showing him around the new factories, letting him browse through the (now historical) records, and introducing him to various people. It's at the end of the thirteenth day when a group of senior researchers finally lead him to an elaborately designed and decorated room on the top floor, sit him down, and ask him what he'd really like to do.

He supposes that they are nervous; he is the only son of the co-founder of the institution, after all, and a previous director in his own right, their only link to the time-traveling servants of the gods and likely their only hope to survive the upcoming calamity. He's no longer Hope Estheim the ex-l'Cie prodigal scientist, the one that binds research and society together with sheer brilliance in a time when everything has just fallen apart and no one can even recognize all the edges of the broken pieces. He has, instead, really become the Academy's origin and continuum; he marks where the journey begins and how it will end. The scientists of the Academy, through their collective choice to let him live and arrive at 400 AF, have made him something like a god and lost their power to argue against him. To fight against him now would mean to fight against all the might of the alpha timeline.

 _Am I already in control, regardless of whether I want it or not?_ He asks himself ironically, trying to rationalize the chain of events. _Could there even_ _ **be**_ _a timeline where I get here but don't get to do anything?_

"I'm here for the Thirteenth Ark," he says, processing his own words as they leave his lips, careful, matter-of-fact and value neutral. "From what I've read, there hasn't been any tangible progress on that case. I may have… an idea, something to investigate. But I'll need a team."

He hasn't been sure about being so direct – academics and researchers are notorious for bristling like gurangatches when others bring up their lack of progress on a project – but he blinks as he notes resigned smiling faces instead. "Are you really just an one-in-a-million genius, Hope Estheim? We've had hundreds of people staring at that thing for _years_ before you woke up."

"… Hm." He supposes that he should have realized that, yet for some reason the praise of others no longer affect him nearly as much as it did before his sleep. _I don't know if I'm older, more mature, more arrogant, or just… more of a cosmic device and less human._ He remembers what he's read of Paddra Nsu Yeul, of how she has lived through hundreds of celebrated lives yet never let her vast knowledge get to her head. _Am I actually a genius or do I just know where to look? It can't be a coincidence that nearly every time I've seen something, it's ended up being relevant to our journey._ "Does that mean I can get a team? I just need a small group, maybe five to ten researchers, people with experience in material science and structural engineering preferred… I'll talk to Alyssa to see if she's interested."

"You won't need to. She's already expressed a wish to work with you no matter what." Even four hundred years later, it's obvious that everyone thinks Alyssa has a thing for him. It's worse because just like last time, they're also always smiling as if they _understand_.

A swirling cloud of unease is building in his stomach. Everything's falling into place too neatly. He's even seen a few time gates that he's sure Serah and Noel would eventually pop out of. His guts sense that he's being manipulated all over again, because nothing can be this smooth and forgiving and _perfect_. Maybe if he just closes his eyes he'll drop through the marble tiles all the way to the surface of Gran Pulse and again, or falling endlessly through Eden –

"Mr. Estheim? Would you like to work without her, then?"

His eyes flutter open. The Academy leaders are still there. The world is unflinchingly real. "I'll… talk to Alyssa." Didn't she express an interest a day or so ago on investigating the new time gates? He can't quite remember. In any case, she has been noticeably more irritable since their arrival, and he's been meaning to talk to her. _She gave up far more than me to get here. From the point of view of everyone, she's here just for me_. "Just give me the people and the resources, and let me know if any time travelers arrive through a gate. I have a lingering suspicion that we will need their help."

"Fair enough. We will assign several personal armed guards as well, just in case. If you haven't learned already, it hasn't exactly been all smooth sailing to get the Academy here from 13 AF." The woman responds, sipping her cup of tea thoughtfully. "We are not about to keep you around for 400 years just to let something happen to you now."

The smile remains plastered on his face. They're right. _Maybe I was destined to get here, but now that I am here, the timeline can diverge again, and who's to say I won't just doom this world tomorrow?_ "I appreciate the concern. Is there anything else you want from me?"

The woman sets down her cup daintily. Despite her obvious expertise in science – he's heard that she's designed Bhunivelze's heating system all on her own – there's something about her that strangely reminds him of Sazh and Vanille's descriptions of Jihl Nabaat. _I'll do politics if I ever have to,_ he thinks fiercely, _but not now. Not when we're running out of time. I'm needed in this time as a technician._ "Do you want anything from _us_ , Hope Estheim?"

"Let everyone call me Hope. I miss the intimacy from my first years here, and surely it'd raise morale if people can believe I'm just one of them." Has he fallen so low that he'll use the sacred camaraderie between scientists for his own ends? He just needs more popular support and more time. Every second he spends here is another second on the doomsday clock. "Thank you so much for your hospitality and understanding."

* * *

His team sets up shop in the HQ and soon the world is reduced to two colors, dull obsidian black and glowing neon green. The team members are all the more conspicuous floating in their pods, specks of hope and light against a tense and gloomy universe. Although he enjoys taking small walks outside in the morning, he appreciates the long, often meditative hours cooped up inside, surrounded only by the colors of his eyes and the faint shadows of circles around those eyes. The space reminds him of the dark smoke-and-code crapsack world that had been the first decade AF, and although he won't ever admit it, that had been home.

"Hope?" Elise calls softly through the intercom, her voice still just a little reverent and low when she utters his name. He looks up from his simulation on the screen, calculations of the number of Bhunivelze homes they'd be able to build and maintain with full utilities. _We are going to need more waste processing plants_. "I have the numbers. I want you to take a look at them, but from what I can tell, it confirms your hypothesis."

"Thank you, Elise. Is Alyssa still working on the graviton core force profile?"

"She told me to remind you to go up there sometime."

"So that she can show off her stuff. Yes. Is the work _done_ , though?"

It's a relief to him that research culture hasn't revolutionized itself during the time that he was gone; if the way scientists worked and presented their work had changed nearly as often as the layout and execution of Cocoon eidolon and grand prix shows, he would have had to spend at least ten years learning how to get through all the loops before even getting to a single file of data. As it is, they still share a morning coffee, still laugh at each other's ten-minute brainstorm ideas, and still prioritize the delivery of goals and products above all else – prestige and genius have not made the Academy stop questioning some of his worse ideas, and although he's both the captain and the sail of the ship, the crew's still a democracy.

He's done his part; stayed up his nights to watch the waves and stars, thrown down his anchor over the open ocean. He can only hope that Noel and Serah would grace him like mermaids and lead him to the treasure at the bottom of the sea. How long has it been? Three years, or three hundred and eighty-seven?

 _What kind of scientist bases their humanity evacuation plan on the paradox-solving prowess of a grade school teacher and a teenage behemoth hunter, anyway?_

"Draft a request for more resources to the HQ," he instructs the bureaucrat boy sitting by his side, sighing softly but amusedly to himself. "We _might_ eventually need to look for those cores in regions with paradoxes… but don't submit that request just yet. Give it… another day."

* * *

He wants to keep Serah and Noel for a few days when they finally arrive – there are so many things he wants to ask or tell them, so many weapons and accessories that he can craft for them, so many tests that he could potentially run on them ( _he's better than that, he swears weakly to himself_ ) – but Noel's fidgety energy and Serah's subtle wistfulness remind him again of just how different and desperate they have become, so he backs off respectfully, instead only doing all he can to make sure that they're safe and well cared for while they are around. Serah apologizes for shouting at him and he thanks her for saving his life. The trade does not feel even, but perhaps cosmically it's never been and never will be, so he just lets it go, chugging it all down with another bittersweet cup of caffeine.

"The graviton cores," he remarks one drizzly night to Alyssa, who seems lost in thought as she runs her own model simulations on the force interactions between the graviton cores as they are locked into place, not even looking up at him as she rapidly types on the keyboard to alter this variable and that, "They had taken way less time than expected to deliver them all."

"Perhaps we'll have too much time as opposed to too little." Her smile is cryptic, crooked. She's gotten a lot more enigmatic with him recently, and he doesn't like what that might mean. Her little farewell speech to Serah and Noel just outside their gate… at least it doesn't feel like anyone in the office knows about it. "Have you seen more oracle drives recently?"

"Me? No," he responds, perplexed. "You know I'd show it to you, if anything like that ever comes around again."

"Oh, but some futures only have you in it," she says airily, waving her hands with a smirk, "you wouldn't need me –"

"Don't say that," he snaps, his voice suddenly rising an octave, and the strain in his voice surprises both of them. _Oh_. He drops the volume as quickly as he drops Serah's hands in Yaschas Massif. "… I mean, Alyssa, please don't depreciate yourself like that. I truly do value your work and your presence here with me. If you ever need anything, I'll be more than willing to –"

"You worry too much, senpai! Worry about yourself. Didn't you hear from Serah and the others that a lot of people wanted to kill you?"

"People and _things_."

"Yeah, _things_ ," Alyssa mimics his tone just enough that all the blood in his body goes cold – _and Serah and Noel are gone, aren't they, they had left two days ago_ – and packs up for the night. She pulls him into a tight hug before she leaves, though, stretching on her tiptoes and wrapping her arms around him so hard it nearly hurt, and he just can't shake off the feeling that something is wrong.

"But they're gone, aren't they? Wiped out from existence. Do you even still remember anything from that project? Focus on the planet instead. That'll stick around even after we're long gone."

"The new planet isn't everything," he mumbles, and her chime-like phantom laugh follows him all the way into every road and dwelling of New Cocoon.

* * *

That night, he decides to experiment with the 400 AF shower.

Unlike the showers he had grown up with, the 400 AF shower is light on water use, but the technology's matured enough that whatever touches his skin still instantaneously releases the tension under it, and he finds himself almost wanting to fall asleep in that state of pure visceral bliss. _Okay, I'll play with decadence, if just for distraction purposes,_ he thinks ironically to himself as he tentatively turns the array of knobs under the water knob and feels himself get absolutely buried by everything from pearly white bubbles to moonlight glitter, _or on second thought… maybe not._

The glitter's made of some kind of interesting new material and he can't get it out of his hair. It makes him look like some kind of otherworldly creature.

He stares at the mirror moodily for a few seconds – he'll get _swamped_ by female colleagues on the way to work tomorrow – and then settles to dry himself as he ponders the idea of jumping ahead again to 500 AF. _Yes_ , he's basically promised Serah and Noel that he'll be there, _yes_ , he's literally done everything so far so that 500 AF will be correct and possible, _no_ –

No, he won't ever see all the friends he's just made again, and no, he doesn't think Alyssa will take it well.

 _It's a mistake to let her come with me_ , he reflects, _it's a mistake to work with her._ Perhaps they _are_ the greatest researcher duo in all of human history, but he can never tell just exactly what she wants from him, except that he cannot possibly provide it.

 _Is it worth it_ , he rubs his temple before moving the towel down to his eyes, _to keep making these kinds of sacrifices for a glimpse of a new world?_

The doorbell rings.

He reaches for the closest control panel in the bathroom as he throws a clean shirt over his head. Connect audio. Turn up the volume. "Hello, this is Hope Estheim, Academia HQ unit 131427. I'm unfortunately currently occup –"

"Hope," a familiar voice growls, " _Let me in_."

His mouth falls open; a half-paralyzed hand takes a few good long seconds to find the button that says _zoom_ and Alyssa's blond head floats into the monitor. She looks wrecked. There is something – blood? – on her grey shirt collar.

"Alyssa?" He cries, scrambling to get up and put on the rest of his uniform. "Where have you been? Are you alright?"

"You have no idea," Alyssa says, and her voice is strangely muffled. "Now open your door and let me in."

"What happened? Was it an attack? Did someone target the headquarters? You have to –"

"The headquarters is safe, nobody in the team is hurt, but I have a few injuries. Now stop fucking the dog and let me in."

Hope takes out his boomerang. Then he punches in the code for the door. He shrinks back and to the side; all the hairs on his arms are standing up. _Time eventually leaves everyone behind; it simply marches on._

The door swings open.

Alyssa's white uniform and yellow sleeves are splattered with redbrown. There are burn marks on her tie and her legs, and she's standing above a field of carnage, nearly a dozen bodies strewn about haphazardly in a dimly lit Academy corridor. The entire floor is dead silent, as if they are the only ones still alive behind the airlock.

As Hope watches, frozen with disbelief, Alyssa lowers the smoking gun in her hands. She turns towards him, direct and unsmiling, her eyes the blue of the goddess of death.

"They wanted to kill you, so I killed them instead."

He says nothing in reply.

"Come with me. We need to go to the Augusta Tower."


	4. Augusta Tower

_**I'm awake; I am in the world-  
I expect  
no further assurance.  
No protection, no promise.**_

* * *

He had stumbled out of Augusta Tower naked.

It's not about clothing, of course; his pale blue tie is still being held aloft by the wind like some sort of flag of truth, and he can still feel the friction of the layer of Academy fabric against his skin, an alien illusionary sensation that claims he's covered, protected. The elevator buttons had unlocked themselves once that which had wanted to be saved had been irrevocably lost, and the journey back down to earth had been too fast and nonchalant for his soul to handle.

(He can't remember her name.)

Emergence: a busy street, sounds of laughter, a woman trying to hand him a pamphlet for the newly refurbished restaurant in New Town. She smiles at the moonlight glitter he hasn't been able to get out of his hair, compliments him on how the iridescent color perfectly matches both his silver head and white uniform. He just feels cold.

Hurried, almost panicked steps onto Grand Avenue: looking for an escape, some kind of answer. The rain abruptly goes from a fine mist to an absolute downpour. Although there are assassins around ( _how did he even exit his room and the airlock without alerting armed guards, and why haven't they yet found him, wandering about alone like this?_ ), he has a strange feeling he is not going to be targeted.

(Not tonight.)

A flash of lightning; a few muffled curses, then the dull, distant growl of thunder. A lone chocobo sprints past him at full speed, sending forth a series of splashes and drenching his torso and legs in fresh runoff. The city is too empty despite being filled with irate residents trying desperately to run from the rain.

 _I'm chasing ghosts that no longer… are._

The rain seeps through his hair, his ungloved hands, the worn-out parts of his boots. It serves poorly to wash away the stain of blood or the depth of his despair. The coldness of the water submerging his toes once again reminds him that he exists, although a part of him wants to deny it, belatedly feels ashamed of being alive, of having reached this moment on no true merit of his own. And to think he had been so obliviously ecstatic to meet Serah and Noel again, blissfully unaware of all that it signified…

 _You… died in another timeline, Hope_ , Serah's words echo in his ear, her gentle smile and kind concern still fresh as yesterday. He had wanted to get down to his knees and thank her, _thank_ her when she handed him the final graviton core, Noel electing to just stand by amusedly and joke with another researcher when the older man just couldn't contain the excitement in his voice. _You were targeted by the proto Fal'Cie you created several centuries before this time, and it had wiped out everyone in the Tower before turning on us…_

 _Ah, yes._ He inhales the rain as it continues to fall with no intention to stop, almost willing himself to drown in this deluge, to slowly and painfully suffocate. The salt burns against the cracks and cuts on his face, sets regret ablaze. _Now I understand. It's not just the city. Her very arrival…_

(A moment of no return.)

… _Everyone in the Tower…_

(He recalls Rose beaming as she was handed the scissors for the ribbon cutting ceremony, and his assistant laughing as she shoved him through the new door, his assistant, he still can't remember her name, he thinks she had short blonde hair, _had_ –)

 _It is ordained now, isn't it? Everyone I used to work with in that Tower – every last researcher and assistant – is dead._

He can't quite recall what has just happened in the Tower in this timeline – _it's over, it's unchangeable, it's dead and gone_ are the only hunches he can gather from his own head – yet the loss hangs over him like a cumulonimbus cloud, the flash flood forcing him to wipe away the idealism from his eyes and see the world for its truth.

 _I decided to travel to this era… on my own. Serah and Noel changed history to save me. I lost someone trying to save myself._

And since this world yet so stubbornly refuses to disappear, the unforgiving chill from the water still eating, ever so slowly, through the pores of his skin…

 _Everything up until this point in time is now set and true._

Mistakes can no longer be rectified or acknowledged by anything other than guilt and shame. The memory of the sunlit corridor just before the containment room, instead of being the pure embodiment of loyalty and trust between comrades and friends, now reeks of his own betrayal.

 _In my quest to flee from my own sense of abandonment, I have abandoned everyone else…_

Noel and Serah? They never set foot again in New Bodhum after 3 AF. Snow and Sazh? One was sent by the goddess to resolve more than two dozen time anomalies bearing his name, and another had been forcibly trapped in time with his child. Alone among the l'Cie, he had lived, grown, and made cherished friends and colleagues after Cocoon's Fall. And to breathe here, standing in this thunderstorm of the future, when everyone he's ever worked with in the Academy are now lost in time, persisting only as fragmented particles in the water and air…

 _I knew this. Had always known – had tried to understand – but just… utterly… failed to_ _ **feel**_ _it. But now that they've been torn away from my grasp, these memories and shapes of faces I can no longer hold close to me…_

 _Who was I to think – even for a_ _ **second**_ _– that I deserve to be here more than any of them?_

"Hey, senpai. How does –"

 _(I remember you. I swear I remember you)_

"How –"

 _(Finish that question. Please finish that question)_

"Hey…."

He reaches for her with pale ungloved fingers and feels only the heaviness of air. She fades

(sings)

into nonexistence, and there's naught he can do to catch up.

The heartbeat in his ears taunts him, the brilliant lights of this era blinding the living artifact with their crystal luminescence. The just ever so slightly _wrong_ taste of the NORA special he consumed earlier tonight churns in his stomach, makes him want to throw up –

 _Can this just be a doomed timeline?_ He cries futilely in his own mind, all pretenses of self-importance and faith lost, all barriers of reason thrown away, wanting more than anything just for this world to be fair, for everyone to be able to see everything they've ever built, for nobody to have to die. Below him the city is being baptized, reborn. Whatever has happened in Augusta Tower tonight is already changing the future. _Even if I must go back,_ _fight, and probably die – can I stop losing everyone?_

The world, laughing at his illogical thoughts and blatant disregard for the laws of time: _and_ _who are you to decide who lives and who dies?_

Another flash of lightning. His hand falls slowly and meekly towards his side. The city horizons are weeping along with him, all the pent-up anger and grief intermingling under one dark, colorless sky; the fake glitter of divine favor is finally completely washed out of his hair, leaving him banal, debased, and raw. All he does is stand.

He knows he's asking for too much; everything dies in the world, and there's no realistic way to bring everyone into the future while still leaving enough in the past to build that very future. Yet the heart rejects the cruelty of restraint, desires eternity beyond its means; it will keep asking that same question, for it knows the answer to be one that no one wants to enunciate:

 _Is this the will of the main timeline, then?_

 _A timeline in which I will always be a solitary spacetime refugee, one who stands and runs as others are cut down and left behind right next to me?_

* * *

 _Senpai, what did you think about inside the Purge train?_

 _Where are you going, senpai?_

 _Hey, senpai. Would you save me?_

His eyes snap open.

He's alone in his room; secure behind two additional layers of airlocks, his body covered in cold sweat. Something has released its hold on him, but fallen just short of setting him free. He tries to mouth the words, recall the memory from the abyss of the chaos.

(But nobody came.)

Groggily, painstakingly, he pulls himself up from the bed, falling into his chair with a sigh. The small desk light he's left on from the previous night is radiating a fuzzy, eerie light, a golden firefly in a thick and seemingly impenetrable darkness. His notebook has similarly been left open on a page, the margins full of the smallest things he's managed to recall about his friends. Rose liked carnations. Jeb had a thing for cyborg porn. And "the assistant" … he's had many researchers help him during the years, that's for sure, but –

He's already feeling the headache.

It's still only 4 a.m.; he shouldn't be up this early, has been living on a diet of naps for days. He knows that it's unhealthy – more than a few of the researchers have suggested that he take a break, it's very understandable to be traumatized after an assassination attempt, after all – but he can't shake off the feeling that he's running out of time.

There are only so many hours in a day, after all. And there's still so much for him to do.

The main structural engineering problems are being taken care of; the graviton cores have been delivered, cast, and tested, and will soon be installed in place for further testing. The main energy grid has been set up, and soon the hydraulics engineers will report to him on the feasibility of building two additional reservoirs. He doesn't have to worry about things like advertising the real estate, thank the gods, but –

He glances again at the notebook and grimaces. There are another two parties scheduled for tonight. One for all the researchers on the 53rd floor, and another for…?

Another sigh escapes him. He turns the notebook to the pages on the back, makes a few more additional notes. Those other researchers he'd have to befriend at a later time. To try to get to know everyone, and to know how to properly, sincerely say his farewells when it comes the time – it truly feels harder than overseeing the construction of an entire planet to hang in the sky.

 _I could always just stay and die in this era. Avoid making that same mistake again._

The problem is that he has a sinking feeling that his life is again not his own, and as much as he may rage and beat against the mechanisms in the hands of (or are they even beyond?) the gods, if he wants to see the world not fall into ruin, he has no choice but to keep on marching ahead.

 _I'm not ready for this. I'm never really going to accept this. This curse of farewells, of loss, even in the name of hope, progress and seeing loved ones again –_

He's wondered about building time capsules for everyone who'd be interested in taking them, only to realize that it'd also be selfish, to assume what others would want to do with their lives. He had detached himself from time due to a special, gargantuan kind of greed for happiness and rebirth; most other people seem to be content just with contributing a little something to their societies, families and friends.

 _There's no real need to fight fate face-on in this era, huh?_

Melancholy settles, for there are no real, satisfying answers, and unlike the last time something like this has happened, there's nobody around to share the burden, either. He's lonely despite attending every single Academy party in existence, isolated even when showered with hundreds of lines of genuine praise and admiration – no one truly _understands_ , and it's his own fault, and he wants to think that he's doing the right thing, but…

 _Don't lie to yourself. Wouldn't you sacrifice everyone all over again just for another chance to see Vanille's smile, feel your heart fill up at the sight of Light's soft rose-colored hair?_

 _Do something useful and practical, Estheim_ , the internal scolding once again comes to the rescue, and he obediently turns on the screens, starts reviewing the proposals for the second stage of Academia's inevitable evacuation even as he steps into the bathroom to brush his teeth.

* * *

"You came, Hope," the Jihl-lookalike greets him at the directors' party, surveying him from head to toe as she accepts a glass of wine from the server. She's wearing a dress from the latest haute couture collection, an expensive and heavily beaded thing that highlights her buxom figure and regal presence. "We weren't sure if we could... _convince_ you to socialize with us."

His smile is unfaltering as he accepts a glass of his own. "I am honored to be invited."

"Oh, no, no. You must not say so. The honor is ours. You are the hope of our present and future, after all. This way."

The ballroom is spacious and luxurious, tiled by rose veined marble and lit from above by a dozen exuberant golden chandeliers. Dozens of tables have already been set, and he spies a DJ getting ready in an opposite corner. They pass by a table of female directors and he catches a breath of all their fragrances, orange, lilac, seafoam and freesia. Greetings are exchanged – he gets a few compliments on his outfit and Jihl gets more than a few on her hair – yet he cannot help but feel like something's missing.

Jihl has kept talking.

"A wonderful New Year's Eve, isn't it? We've kept up the tradition of hosting old Bodhum-style fireworks. Perhaps you can tell us if any of the details are amiss. You are the only person who still remembers that era, after all…"

 _New Year's Eve?_

He has forgotten. He hasn't been counting time except for the number of the days since his arrival.

An image of his mother – tall, gentle, yet stoic as she answered the questions directed at him from the PSICOM soldiers in Bodhum – slowly flashes past his eyes, and he chuckles, keeping his voice light. "I must apologize, but I originally hail from Palumpolum, and I've never been an expert on light shows. Surely the fireworks now are more spectacular than any of the ones I've ever seen."

"We do hope that you'll enjoy it. We ordered a batch specifically designed to honor you, after all." They've arrived at a table well away from the gathering or the dance floor, and her smile has grown crooked, enigmatic. "Please sit."

He sits.

"We have much to discuss."

He waits for her to begin.

"Are you not excited about the fireworks? You can choose the style and color, if you so desire. We've been told you seem especially fond of golden yellow, warm peach and pale rose."

"I am but a visitor. I am already humbled that the directors would like to honor me. How the directors see me is how I am."

"A visitor, you said? We must apologize for the grave lapse of security on our part… that must not have helped you feel at home. We do hope, however, that you feel well-protected now – we are training a new specialized squad for your personal protection as we speak."

The assassination… he's still not figured out who really was after him, or why. His memories regarding the assassination are foggy. A half dozen bodies strewn just outside his door… assassins inside the airlock. There's no way for him to know if someone within the Academy institution had wished to see him removed.

But if that might change the timeline…

"Hopefully, they will finish their training by next Monday. Would you have time to meet with them next Tuesday?"

He feels his lips tighten ever so slightly. "… I'm afraid I may be mistaken, but I believe that's the planned date for the installation of the first graviton core?"

"Indeed. You possess a fine memory, Hope. That date's only ever been announced once as an afterthought in an internal memo."

He feels himself blink once, and then twice. Jihl's wearing an amused expression. _So that's why the mechanical engineers were so confused when I tried to talk about it with them. I didn't know they have been kept in the dark. This has been some kind of test, and… I suppose they believe I have overstepped._ "… Do the directors believe it best for me to not get involved?"

"My, my, Hope." Her voice is too musical, too value-laden. He wonders dimly how his father had ever navigated this, why he's never really bothered to learn, if knowing how to talk past sincerity would have helped him survive a few more timelines. "Must you be so direct? We only desire to see you take a bit more time for yourself. Your assistants have told me about your sleeping problems, your seemingly low moods. Academia worships you. Have you thought about how demoralized the citizenry would be if they were to see you lose faith in yourself?"

" _A bit more time"? What kind of time do they even mean?_ "I appreciate the concern, but surely I can take the break after the cores have been installed? If you recall, I had initiated the whole project on the cores, and if anything from the test results do not match up with expected performance –"

"Do you not trust our researchers to follow your vision through?"

 _She interrupted me._ The urge to swallow the words is strong – he has no way to tell if even the wine he has drunk has been poisoned – yet he cannot give up without a fight. "This concerns New Cocoon. New Cocoon is the one shot we have for surviving Cocoon's inevitable fall. As such, we cannot possibly endanger it. Forgive me for saying this, but for us to not take all the precautions we can – for me to leave the graviton cores team – would be gravely irresponsible both to the principles of science and the citizens of Academia."

The table is silent. He knows he's definitely overreached this time, yet this is something he cannot possibly compromise on. To be forced into a vacation now – an _extended_ vacation, he'd guess, if he knew anything about political struggles – would defeat the entire point of his journey here, considering what he's seen of the Academy's progress on the artificial planet so far. _If I thought sacrificing others for me to reach the future was horrific, sacrificing others only for me to watch everything fail is worse._

Jihl's glasses are too opaque for him to try to read her.

"As expected from our prodigal scientist, the only child of our institution's Founder." How did she already finish her glass of wine? He hasn't even gotten halfway through his. "Such integrity and bravery is truly admirable. You would sacrifice yourself to see this project to completion?"

He blinks.

"If that is the case, we will not stop you. The teams will depart on Tuesday morning, at 7 a.m. sharp." She's stood up; the beads on her dress are ominously opalescent under the fading twilight. "We'll be leaving from the newly constructed terminal, right across the street from Augusta Tower."

* * *

 _You would sacrifice yourself to see this project to completion?_

 _There's nothing else for me here_ , he thinks to himself, washing his hands slowly and deliberately after the second round of desserts. It's around eleven in the evening and soon everyone will just be standing around for good spots to watch the fireworks. _They've already told me everything they want me to know._

 _Tuesday morning, 7 a.m. The terminal across from Augusta Tower._

Something about all of this doesn't quite make sense.

 _If she – they – want to kill me, why let me know exactly what will kill me?_

 _More strangely… why Augusta Tower?_

The new terminal has been built specifically to facilitate transport to New Cocoon; he knows this, but _everyone_ knows this. If they _really_ thought he didn't know where it was, Augusta Tower was still a strange choice for a landmark. There are closer, more well-known locations by the terminal, and Augusta Tower…

Augusta Tower…

Do they know what had happened in the Tower?

The water's scalding his hands.

He can feel that familiar headache at the back of his mind again.

Dry off the hands, straighten the tie, a slow walk back towards Jihl and the other organizers. He bows low, feels everyone's eyes on him. "I know I have already apologized many times tonight, so I deeply regret having to apologize again," he hears himself say. "But I'm wondering – could I perhaps be excused? The talks with the directors have given me a lot of food for thought, and considering the recent assassination attempt and the planned fireworks in my honor… I'd like some time and privacy to process my emotions."

"Of course, Hope. We apologize if tonight has been too… overwhelming for you." He sees the glint in Jihl's eyes and thinks, _I believe I'm on the right track if I'm not going to straight up die._

"I will let you know of my answer soon."

* * *

He swings by his apartment first, changes into casual clothes that'd help him get around without getting noticed. The place's still all too tidy, uniforms neatly hung up on the racks, screens turned off and folded up, and all the books carefully shelved away. Even his notebook has been locked away in its drawer. He hesitates, wonders for a moment if he should take it out and throw it into a fire.

 _There's nothing in it I should be ashamed of_ , he remembers, and exhales deeply, putting his keys away.

The old-fashioned photo frames are still a cluttered mess on the floor; he has been collecting them – trying to find as many pieces of memento as he could on his old friends and colleagues – yet he's sure there are still those whose pictures he hasn't found, and more whose names he can no longer recall. He picks each frame up from the ground now, stows them away. He idly wonders if he'll be with them soon.

 _For some reason, I don't think Serah and Noel can help me this time._

He tries the bathroom video monitor one last time. Fails one last time: no memory triggered. The door and the airlock opens to an empty corridor that smells too much like bleach.

 _Why am I doing this?_

(He doesn't quite think he's suicidal.)

 _I could just stay here._

(He can probably ask for very generous "vacation" terms.)

 _Who knows if my body will even be found, within Augusta Tower or somewhere between there and New Cocoon?_

(A part of him wonders idly if he can ask the citizens to help him. Another part of him knows it's selfish and impractical.)

 _How did we even get to this point?_

The first gust of winter air outside the automatic door sends a few shivers down his spine, nearly knocks him off balance. He's alone at the side entrance of Academy HQ. It's still not even cold enough to snow. He knows he's feeling something else.

 _Ghosts, huh? Or perhaps that feeling of fate and time._

It's the same walk; _has_ to be the same walk, for this is when his memory of that day becomes blurry, and he knows he had gone to Augusta Tower. He feels a presence walking next to him but can't make out its face, its height or features. He tries to reach for it anyway: hallucinations are common in those who are about to die.

 _Are you… dead?_

 _Were we… friends?_

A madness drives him on, a guilt and a yearning that refuses to stop.

This reckoning is his alone.

* * *

He's once again forgotten that it's New Year's Eve.

Unlike that day, this day is not burdened with rain; the residents have come out in droves to watch the fireworks and celebrate the new year, and the air is abuzz with sounds, music and mirth as well as audible advertisements and the occasional patrolling airship. He spends fifteen minutes trying to cross the flowing human river before giving up, smiling despite himself at the crowd, marveling at their energy, their wonder. There's hope here, a festival of colors even just on the screens of skyscrapers and the escalators connecting the various levels, and as he unwittingly bumps into this family and that couple, he cannot help but wish he could stay, to let himself melt into this crowd, this era.

 _A little while_ , he tries (and somehow manages) to convince himself, _I'll just stay for a little while._

(He doesn't want to get left behind.)

A child and his mother strolls by, two redheads with balloons in their hands and candy in their mouths. A father's asking a patrolling officer for directions; a group of young men are toasting each other with still-foamy beers. Someone had shouted "happy new year" towards another crowd and now the sound's echoing back, a rising and falling rhythm of _happy new year_ s, _thank you_ s and _you too_ s. There's someone in an Academy uniform climbing clumsily onto a tree with something in hand, probably trying desperately to fix a broken festival light.

He finds a small space outside a café to quietly observe the sight.

"Hey, hey, listen to this joke – I'm going to actually do my laundry on time this year!"

"Didn't they just invent a super cheap laundry-folding robot? Go come up with a better resolution, man!"

"Say, I've finally finished paying the down payments for my house!"

"What the hell? It hasn't even been two months!"

"Landed a gig cleaning out one of Cocoon's old power plants. Pays super well. Want me to write you a reference?"

 _Perhaps it's a good thing that this isn't a doomed timeline_ , he reflects, backing up just another inch against the concrete wall, his heart an anxious fluttering bird in his chest even as it continues to constrict at the smell of gunpowder and electricity in the air. _If we can't have it all… if I can remember and appreciate all of this – even if just for this night – in the stead of everyone who's dead and gone, then…_

"Did you hear? They're setting off a special batch for Director Estheim! I wonder if it would be a completely different style or color?"

"He's originally from Cocoon, no? So perhaps something inspired by the crystal pillar?"

"Wait! I think that's the first one!"

A barely stifled gasp of something resembling panic. He's not ready.

 _(But please, let them be brilliant.)_

The sound of something like a whistle – and then the blossoming of a flower, its thousand petals glittering and crackling as they unfurl in the air. A wave of appreciative _ooo_ s and _aaaa_ s in the crowd – and then all the sounds drowned out by the racket of a dozen fireworks going off all at once, an entire sky becoming illuminated by flowers, stars, spinning discs and dragons as pale crystalline particles fall from the sky like rain, a shower of lights and music.

Once it begins, everything comes in a flood: the classic, simple monochromic ones, the layered ones, the ones that gleam for minutes refusing to fade, the ones that blink and scintillate like electronic pulses, the ones that leave shimmering trails like heavy willow branches, the ones exploding outwards like cosmic rays fleeing from a collapsing star. Bouquets are being outlined with the edges of the fireworks, not to say flights of birds and northern lights, and there's so much he's never seen, never imagined in his dreams that he would be able to see –

 _If I had made a wish all those centuries ago with Mother… perhaps…_

Tears are suddenly threatening to build and overflow, so he turns away, wipes awkwardly and aggressively at his eyes. Beyond the blur people are still craning their necks, the joy in the air just the same as the joy he remembers from Bodhum just a few days before the Purge. He had wrapped his arms around her then; she had run her hands through his soft hair, called him her greatest treasure. She's seeing this through him; she has to be, for he is her legacy, the proof that she once lived and loved in this world. He can still make a wish now; not everything's lost.

 _I wish… I wish for renewal and rebirth. I wish for happy endings. I wish that everyone who's ever fought for a brighter future will be rewarded, loved. I…_

(He no longer has the luxury to make his own wishes.)

 _I… I am thankful. So, so thankful._

 _We always make all these wishes for ourselves. Ask for things without giving anything back, or thinking about our blessings. But I'm so glad. So glad to have made it this far, to have done what I could. Even if I will always wish for more… Even if we've all lost so much._

 _Even if something's going to happen later tonight…_

"Citizens of Academia!" Jihl's voice is booming over the thundering of the fireworks from the roof of Academy HQ; the city buzzes, then falls respectfully silent. His heartbeat's suddenly too loud in his own ears.

 _No –_

"This one's for us, and for Director Hope Estheim!"

On the gigantic screen, Jihl signs for launch. He barely gets to cross his shaking fingers and hold his breath.

A whole six whistles – is it for the six l'Cie? Do they even know he was one of the original l'Cie? – pierce through the silence and the pitch-black canvas of the night sky, stitching together dream and memory as they combust and disintegrate. Soon enough, a pure white crystal pillar is looming and gleaming just beneath a blue-and-green Cocoon, a magical thing created out of fireworks dust and afterimage. It remains still as if frozen for four whole seconds until sounds of cracks are heard and the pillar crumbles and falls, taking its precious load along with it, yet –

 _I –_

"New Cocoon!" Someone cries out right behind him. "Look at New Cocoon!"

He searches for the signs of fireworks – surely, they're crafting a planet out of those just as they've crafted a pillar out of pure fire and trails of light – yet the entire, _real_ planet behind the HQ building has started to glow, its shell solemn and dark ocean blue as each area's celestial blue lights turn on one by one. First it's the power station at the core – then the central commercial district – then the residential districts, the multiple reservoirs, the new Academy headquarters, the lakes and the roads, the _graviton cores_ –

 _Oh._

It's Jihl's voice again. "Trust in New Cocoon! We will make it rise!"

There are fireworks being set off from New Cocoon itself; he doesn't wait for the show to finish. Instead, he runs into the café, shoving several guests unceremoniously aside with mumbled apologies as he makes a beeline for the bathroom. Tears are rolling down his cheeks, flaming and stinging and all-too-wistful; there's a sob deep within his lungs, an unspeakable, entangled thing that just loves, _wants_ –

He's feeling just a little bit overwhelmed.

* * *

Someone calls his name as he's about to leave.

"Excuse me. Is it… Director Estheim?"

He looks up, eyes slightly red and dazed behind shades and a fringe of silver hair. The woman offers another stack of tissues; he hesitates, and takes it.

"… I'm so sorry. Thank you. And you are?"

"Oh. So it really is you." The woman chuckles and he realizes she must be the owner of the café, or at least someone who's worked here for a very long time. Something in her eyes reminds him of his mother – a steadfast warmth, one that seems to permeate and radiate through her skin. "I wasn't sure. Thought the real Hope Estheim would be hanging out with the big names up in the HQ, instead of with us common folks. But… are you alright?"

 _Big names? Common folks? When it comes down to it, does it really matter?_ "… Yeah. I just got… a little emotional at the fireworks."

The woman nods sympathetically. "I don't blame you. Truth be told, I can't possibly imagine what you're going through." She notions towards an empty table; the other servers have flipped the sign at the door to "closed," and the last few guests are slowly filing out. "Want a coffee?"

"…?"

"… It's on me. You look like you aren't quite ready to go."

He can't quite argue against that, so he nods obediently, sits down at the table. She inquires after his favorite flavors, brings a warm cup with a small porcelain plate full of sugar cubes. As he thanks her and begins stirring, she pours a small cup of hot chocolate for herself and waits for the last person to leave. And then:

"My daughter really has a crush on you, you know that?"

He nearly chokes on his coffee.

"Now, now, don't pretend you don't know you're popular. The city loves you."

"Indeed it does." _Even though I don't even know why._

"Do you not love us?"

He's too exhausted to keep answering everything correctly. He can only hope he's not being too rude. "I try. It's… wondrous, that's for sure, more than anything I've ever dreamed of, but it's… not quite the same."

"Missing your own era, I take it?"

"Yes. And… I don't belong here." _Even though I'd love to see those fireworks again_. "It's hard to… really feel at home when I've promised to leave and see everything through in 500 AF." The slightest dip of the head. "I'm sorry."

"Ah." The woman, strangely, doesn't sound offended or disappointed. She doesn't even ask him to take off his sunglasses and look her in the eye. "You want to be there when Cocoon actually falls?"

"There are people there that I want to protect." _If I can get there._ It's the same thing he's told Noel and Serah; the selfish answer seems to always be the honest one.

The woman picks up a sugar cube, drops it in her own drink. There's a knowing smile in her eyes. "And if they are not there for whatever reason… won't that era be just the same as this one?"

"I…" He has thought about the possibility; has tried to force it out of his mind. He doesn't know how many time capsules he'll be able to build before he breaks. There's a part of him that doesn't want to pick up the pieces of him from this table, force him to keep running for home. "I don't know. I suppose that's right. I know I can't save everyone – but I've got to at least try."

"Good enough for me." In one swoop, she's picked up and directly swallowed three whole sugar cubes. "Did I tell you? I grew up with the Farseers, even served the seeress back in the day. You hear all kinds of strange and unfathomable things being around her. My advice to you? Don't blame yourself too much. Don't cry because it's over – smile because it happened."

* * *

It's nearly dawn when he finally reaches Augusta Tower.

Built in 13 AF just before he left everyone behind, Augusta Tower feels like a gigantic artifact now, a thing removed from and untouched by time. It looms in this area, a silent observer and sentinel, its outermost layers of concrete and glass worn by centuries of sunlight and rain, its once-vibrant colors faded and dull even under the rising sun. The automated system at the entrance is still reading ID cards, the door rotating ever so slightly as if someone's gone in right before him…

 _A grave. This Tower is also a grave. A grave for all my past colleagues, all my past assistants… and maybe, just maybe, me._

He takes his hat and shades off, places them just above the recycling bins. He'll come back for them later if he makes it out of here alive.

 _If I'm fated to die here, then let me die. But please, don't let the hopeful future disappear._

There are still so many questions – _why_ being the foremost of them – but he only approaches the terminal, enters the password to turn on the central directory. They haven't told him where to go after he gets to the Tower. He can only assume there are things he's supposed to find out, forbidden histories that offer clues as to where the Academy had gone wrong.

 _My sins? Others' sins? Are there still Fal'Cie pulling invisible strings, even after all this time? Did we hurt someone we really should have just left alone?_

(This feels too unnervingly familiar.)

The archives contain data and records all the way back to the founding of the Academy, lists of employees in various departments and excavation finds from ruins all over Gran Pulse. Nothing has been highlighted. He supposes he can start chronologically, or just look for records about himself that's been created after he's entered the time capsule.

 _Maybe there are clues as to why a certain group has grown to hate me…_

Maybe there will be records of oracle drives, too? Nothing evacuated by 13 AF has shown anything past 500 AF, but perhaps now there are things that tell of events after that date. It's one of the first things he asked about after he woke up in this era, that is true, but why would they inform him of any horrible visions involving himself? Perhaps someone had seen a recording of him destroying the world in 1000 AF, and decided to step in…

 _I wouldn't even be upset if that's what had happened…_

(It hurts to be betrayed.)

He looks up the oracle drive records, grimaces when the main screen on the floor suddenly comes to life, a shower of light where there were only dust and darkness. There's a whole catalogue…

10 AF… 11 AF… 13 AF…

His lips automatically pull up in a smile when he sees his friends again, and he wonders where they are, if Serah and Noel are safe in the historia crux, if his creations have helped them at all. Light has more important things to concern herself with than to worry about his well-being – compared to her struggles, all of this is nothing.

(He can't be weak.)

26 AF… 247 AF… 398 AF…

His search is fruitless. It's as he had suspected: all records end at 500 AF. It's as if there's some time of time crash there, a hard reset for the entire world. Perhaps when all's said and done, New Cocoon will simply not be sufficient to save all of humanity, and he must be removed before the Academy can attempt something else?

"Hello?" He asks into the silence, tries to look composed and friendly. If they've placed a physical tracker on him, he's sure they've placed an audio one as well. "If it's the future of this world you're afraid for… I'm willing to do whatever it takes. I don't want power or fame; I'm just a scientist and researcher. As long as I'm informed and given a chance to work… I'll do everything in my power to help."

No answer. The thumping beats of his heart is going to drive him insane.

Deflated, he turns to the directory again, wondering if there's something he's missing, some kind of dreadfully obvious clue. On this floor there are mostly only recordings of memos from his own era, nothing he hasn't seen or heard before; if they want him to access something a bit more classified, perhaps he'd have to go up a few floors –

Wait.

A title catches his attention, sends a wave of trepidation down his spine. He clicks through all too quickly, even though he's not sure he wants to know what kind of recording is contained within:

 **The Final Message of Team Alpha, 13 AF**

 _I thought they… just went on to live out their days? All my research supports that conclusion – haven't I even looked up their family trees? Jeb had two children, the twins working in the kitchen four each, and…_

A small _click_ from the monitor. He almost jumps, expecting a shot from a hidden gun or the release of some kind of toxic gas. What floats into the screen is but a harmless notification: _your audio recording file has been decoded. Play?_

 _I… I don't think this is exactly what they wanted me to hear. But I want to hear this anyway._

He pulls out a set of earbuds from his storage packs – if those monitoring him can't hear what he's hearing, they'll let him know – plugs it gingerly into the audio port, and presses _play_.

* * *

 _Director?_

Pause. Replay. Resume.

 _Director! It's been a long time. A whole sixty years –_

 _Don't listen to him. He's just trolling. It's only been a week since you went to sleep._

Pause. A furtive, desperate look around. Resume.

 _This is a stupid idea._

 _Jeb thought of it first._

 _No, you._

 _Urrrrrrghhhh. You guys are impossible to work with. I don't know how the Director ever dealt with you guys._

 _He had and will have to have a lot of patience, that's for sure._

 _Stop going off topic. We only allocated an hour for this, remember? There's still a meeting after, we can't laze off just because he's gone._

 _Okay, okay. Well, you had that long ass script, so you go first._

…

 _Director, if you're listening, we're hopeless and we are sorry._

 _Anyway, Jeb said we should do this so you wouldn't feel too lonely four hundred years in the future._

Pause. A deep breath, another check for hidden gun barrels. Resume.

 _I still think this is an awful idea. Like, come on, what kind of advice can we even give the Director? He's the smartest of all of us by a looooooong shot._

 _Well, he said he always liked to hear what we have to say._

 _Yeah, like you've ever given anything that isn't terrible advice._

 _Please, it's not like your dating tips are that much better._

 _Okay okay, I've got an actual important one: If Leanne's roll-Cocoon-down-a-hill idea is still alive and well in 400 AF, please go defile her grave for me._

 _Come on, it's not – ow._

 _What about Gardenia's aircars? They're just as bad._

 _I dunno man, if they've made it to 400 AF, they can't be that bad._

Pause. Something that's halfway between a chuckle and a sob. Resume.

 _Whatever, Director, just please make sure the Academy doesn't completely jump the shark in its research projects._

… _Although if it does, that'd be our fault._

 _Say, how's 400 AF like?_

 _You know he can't answer, right?_

… _I can pretend._

 _I'd kill to see the future, though. Like, what if they don't speak our language anymore? What if they no longer work with screens and computer simulations?_

… _Those spoiled brats don't know anything about working without any blueprints or electric power._

 _Hey, weren't you the one bragging about the new power stations like, two days ago?_

 _Oh! I found my script!_

 _Well, floor's yours. Go ahead and read it._

…

 _Come on._

 _Well. Here goes nothing. Director: hopefully, by the time you hear this, it's 400 AF and we're all dead._

 _God, could you be a little bit more morbid?_

 _I think it's just the right amount of earnest, actually._

Pause. Three whole deep breaths. Resume.

 _Ahem. Anyway, we have no idea what it's like four hundred years in the future. Maybe you're listening to this through some kind of super fancy sound setup. Maybe you're listening to this from some kind of jail cell. Maybe some of our clones or duplicates are reading it out loud. We don't know. Nobody knows. But we just wanted to record this little something, to tell you that we'll always trust and support you, no matter when you are, no matter what you do. You know how much we all rely on you to get anything done – you're the most brilliant of us, and on top of that, you have the biggest heart too, which is just something that doesn't simply come around. You care about everyone and everything, try to save and improve everything you get your hands on – and somehow, magically, they just_ _ **do**_ _. Uhhh… this part isn't too cringey, yeah?_

 _No! It's great!_

 _Go on!_

… _Yeah. Anyway, we know it's going to be hard. You can't come back – and we can't be there to cheer you up. Maybe they won't trust you, or they'll regard you as some kind of relic, some random dude who thinks he knows oh-so-much. Maybe everything will already have been solved! Point is: just keep your eyes front, yeah? That's what you always tell us._

Pause. An all-too-quickly aborted struggle to find tissues or a bathroom. Resume.

 _We're not worried in the least that you're going to do the right thing! You should be more worried about us, really. But hopefully – if you're hearing this now – we'll have kept our side of the bargain, too. We will keep working, make Cocoon and Academia better. If we get stuck on something, we'll keep working on it until it resolves itself. If other people like PSICOM and the Sanctum rise up again… you can count on us to force them right back down._

…

 _Ah, sorry, I got a bit too emotional there._

 _Want me to finish?_

 _Go ahead. There are just a few lines left._

 _We won't forget you, and we know you won't forget us. Go on. Show the world and the future what the Academy is made of._

…

 _That's it._

 _Anyone got anything else to say?_

 _Oh! Look after yourself always. You're good at everything except self-preservation._

 _I don't think it's that, it's more like he keeps sacrificing himself for us._

 _You know it's basically the same thing, right?_

Pause. Rewind. Replay. Replay again. Resume.

 _Whatever. Basically, watch out! It does nobody any favors if you just get yourself killed._

 _I'm sure he'll be fine. He's not the type to recklessly charge into danger._

 _You'd think…_

 _Just take care of yourself, Director. Godspeed._

 _Oh, and don't forget to tell A…_

The recording trails off, interrupted by bouts of static. He falls to his knees and buries his face in his hands. He's promised himself he's not going to cry – not here, not even when the invisible gun finally reveals itself and buries a bullet into his heart – yet the tears just keep coming, and he's no longer sure how he still has any left.

 _Everyone…_

Their voices reverberate in his ears, shattering him and piecing him back altogether all at the same time. Here, terribly alone and unable to see the sunrise, a messy heap on the floor with nowhere to stand, he's never felt more alive.

 _Everyone… I…_

He's still crumbling, so: sprawl out. Stare at the ceiling. From the dim light of the screen he can see his own breath, wisps of white fog dissipating into the cold winter air. It's a new year. It's a new year and he doesn't know how he should die.

 _I… If only I know how to be brave…_

He can live; can retire from the project, but then his friends' descendants might not find a refuge in the sky, live to see the year 501 AF pass them by. He can _try_ to work behind the scenes – try to find someone who'd tell him everything he needs to know – but he doesn't even know who to trust, and everyone's running out of time.

He forces himself to climb up and look at the screen again, check the time; it's nearly five in the morning and all the exits of the Tower are locked. They want an answer out of him. If he doesn't say what they want to hear –

The audio recording cackles, resumes again. He freezes, stares blankly at the screen.

* * *

 _Director Estheim?_

 _If you are listening to this, your life is in grave danger._

 _Don't worry about this segment being overheard – I've specifically written this segment over the next segment of the audio, with a command to erase this whole segment when you're done listening to it. Anyone listening in right now would only hear that segment and assume you're just being emotional. It seemed to have been a recording for someone else, anyway._

 _I imagine you'd have met me by now. I probably told or hinted at you to go to Augusta Tower, check out some of the recordings. The truth is, as much as your friends have striven to keep the Academy pure, it's gone a little astray. Some of us want to continue to follow the examples set by you and your father, work towards the completion of New Cocoon and a better future for all mankind – but others are interested in power for its own sake, and don't care for the state of the world once they themselves are dead._

 _Those people want you dead. They know they're no match for your charisma and intellect in combination with the forces of the loyalists within the Academy, so they want to remove you as quickly as possible. Perhaps you've already endured an assassination attempt or two. I don't foresee them backing down, but perhaps – if they somehow lose confidence in their ability to eliminate you, they might just try to force you into retirement instead. If they ask that of you – if_ _ **I**_ _ask that of you – do not go up against that demand. We need a little more time to collect all the resources and evidence we need to disarm them and remove them from power, so just stay low profile for a little while. We're winning as long as you remain alive._

 _You might want to ask: why am I doing this? Well, Jeb is one of my ancestors. I may not have the friendliest demeanor, but I remember the tales my family has told of you over the generations. We need you – your mind, your will, and your heart – to survive this era and lead humanity to survive 500 AF. We will do our best to make sure the Academy of 500 AF will be more receptive to you – people who are only politicians will no longer suffice as leaders in 500 AF. There's a time crash coming. Cocoon will fall, New Cocoon will rise… and suddenly, everything ends. I don't think even you or your time-traveling friends know what's coming._

 _Oh. How did I know you'd pick this recording? Well, it's perfect, isn't it? If you were someone worth protecting, you'd want to know what Jeb and friends had wanted you to hear. As for my colleagues… they'd think you'd backed down because of their warnings to you at the end._

 _Stay safe, Director Estheim. I hope to speak to you again soon, when we can just make fun of my ancestor and your sore lack of politics skills._

* * *

He looks up, holds the earbuds up to the sky. Although there's still no sunlight in the room – although there are still, almost certainly, concealed guns and lasers in the darkness – he manages a small, weary smile.

"Hello?" He whispers into the dying night, his steps small and labored as he shuffles towards the entrance of the Tower. "It's nearly time for work. I'd like to leave."

"And where are you going?"

He knows how to answer. _And this isn't even a lie._ "Home."


End file.
